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In the Carbon Hills 

A Romance of 
The Land of Coal 


BY 

W. H. REYNOLDS 

Author of “OUR BROTHER’S CHILD,” “LETTERS TO A MINE 
FOREMAN,” “THE TIDE OF DESTINY,” 

ETC., ETC. 


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* ) 



Butler, Penna. 

THE ZIEGLER PUBLISHING CO. 
Publishers 







Copyright 1917 by 
THE ZIEGLER PUBLISHING CO. 


% 



SEP 18 1917 


©CI.A476176 


* 


To Elizabeth Agnew and Emily Wilbur, 
in grateful remembrance of their long-contin¬ 
ued kindness to the Author, this story of life 
in the great coal fields is dedicated. 































FOREWORD 


During the immediate years following the publication 
of my second book* there came to me, unsolicited, some 
three hundred letters from readers in almost every part of 
this country. Practically all of these bore messages of 
congratulation ; some merely that and nothing more; oth¬ 
ers again were even more pathetic than the story that had 
brought them forth. For many who had read that book 
fiction was become reality: reality fiction. To one sym¬ 
pathetic reader—a mine foreman living East of The Alle¬ 
ghenies—“Robert Oakley” was the synonym for his own 
brother, whose life and death were identical to a tragic 
degree with “Oakley’s.” 

From others came such questions as doubtless few au¬ 
thors are called on to answer, among them one seeking to 
know if Oakley really was lost at Harwick? And what 
could one answer but the truth, painful as it might be: 
that the hero of THE TIDE OF DESTINY was indeed 
one of our industry’s victims: that Little Bob and Helen 
and Sarah still mourn his passing, knowing that we also 
know: that Eternity is the richer for his wholesome pres¬ 
ence in the same ratio that this Nation is the poorer for 
his loss and the loss of his kind. 

And in continuing these romances of Coal-Land I 
would say to the inquirer beforehand that Carbonia and 
The Bffie of this tale are as real as Collson and Pete, or as 


♦The Tide of Destiny. 


I 






animate as Bobbie Burns MacDonald and Eldred Morris, 
and as much a part of United States Mining Life. 

As to the events of national scope with which this story 
deals no single Romance were of length sufficient, with¬ 
out boredom, to more than “touch elbows’' with the main 
issues. Perhaps in a better day some later critic will 
doubt such history either wholly or in part. We heartily 
hope so, since doubt in that premise presages betterment. 
And inevitably that era in our Nation’s legal and indus¬ 
trial development must come. Dawn of a mining-day is 
already on the horizon, which, reaching the meridian of 
efficiency, will make it no longer necessary to provide 
made-to-order “God’s Acres” between Sabbaths to berth 
our mining dead: when tragedy shall cease to heap on 
tragedy: the cry of the widow cease to be multitudinous: 
the wail of the fatherless as infrequent as it should be and 
can be with a certain method—a less flexible law. 

To the foremen, mine managers, and mining engineers, 
of the future, speeding in train or motorcar past bare, 
gray, mounds alone marking where one day stood our 
present Carbonias and Bffics, the extent of their predeces¬ 
sors’ tolerance—not to sa}^ laxity—will be almost unbe¬ 
lievable, certainly not enviable. That there should have 
been a time in this nation’s history when without fear of 
law' employer and employee could play shuttlecock with 
hundreds of lives, with the life-long poverty and misery 
of thousands of innocent women and children, all for the 
sake of a few extra dollars or no dollars at all, will be 
covered by the same glamour of unreality as our vision 
of things gone by. Nations, apparently, not to be out¬ 
done by their components, traverse “the seven ages” to 
an aged calm. 

To those newer generations out of which may come a 
Searcher After Truth the author would suggest only a 
careful review of mining annals of Pennsylvania and its 
neighboring states for the years 1900-1915, to substantiate 


2 




whatever historical references may be contained herein. 
In the Official Report of The State of Pennsylvania for 
the years 1909-1910 he will find actual proof of the phe¬ 
nomenal rise of not one Eldred Morris and Surgeon Am- 
bridge, but thousands, who, as they, denied university 
education in youth gained it in manhood through the 
native ability common to that type of our mining men. 

But to depict alone the virtues and ignore the vices 
would be an obvious injustice to the industry as well as 
the story describing it. For that reason the author has 
intentionally glossed no error and spared no fault of em¬ 
ployer or employee possible in so brief a space. And if 
there be error in the depiction of that feature of mining 
life involving the periodic conflict of opinion between em¬ 
ployer and employee it is without intent to wrong either 
side. No matter how fair-minded; no matter what the 
misery entailed; this must and will continue through the 
very nature of humanity and present circumstance until 
there shall be chosen a Permanent Court of Compulsory 
Arbitration whose decision in every matter of serious 
menace shall be binding, with the same powers to im¬ 
prison for contempt as any court of law. We provide 
thus for petty misdemeanors affecting the welfare and 
peace of a few; we leave to the uncertainties of men’s 
passions and to chance the welfare of millions. 

Another consideration is, out of sympathy for my own 
comrades, reluctantly mentioned. It is addressed chiefly 
to them. Every trade has, unfortunately, its Rummels 
and Pietreccos, its Dominies, Straffords and Maloneys. 
The means may differ, the end sought is the same, 
whether the former be a bribe to the fireboss over the 
saloon-bar, a greenback to the foreman, or leaded weights 
for the scales. Frankly as one must write in a narrative 
truly describing the chosen theme I am glad to record, 
however, the fact that an unusually extensive acquaint¬ 
ance with every phase of the industry, has proved the 


3 


incidents herein described as exceptional, and therefore 
reason why suggestion looking to total eradication should 
not be omitted from these pages. 

In The Land of Coal this is necessarily so. In precept 
and example to the men in his control the official mining 
man’s wagon must indeed be hitched to a star of the 
first magnitude if he would succeed. May the future 
historian of the craft never find more of its tailboard 
dragging the mud than has fallen to the lot of the pres¬ 
ent writer to observe, and as much less as possible of 
any weakness which lowers by the most minute quantity 
and quality the splendid manhood, the illimitable cour¬ 
age, the sternness yet almost womanly kindliness and 
sympathy for the weak and suffering, the ensemble of 
manly attributes characteristic of my former companions 
of The Underground. 

WILLIAM HAMPTON REYNOLDS. 
Butler, Pennsylvania. 


4 


i 


TABLE OF CONTENTS 


Chapter 

I. When Friendship Wears the Cloven Hoof. 

II. “Mud For Poor Nellie; Rocks For Pete/’ 

III. Where Saint and Devil Met. 

IV. Tickets Returned. 

V. The Miner and The Maid. 

VI. AN UNDERGROUND DRAMA: Act One: 
The Crime. 

VII. AN UNDERGROUND DRAMA : Act Two: 
An Unfortunate Accessory. 

VIII. AN UNDERGROUND DRAMA: Act Three : 
The Penalty. 

IX. The Local President. 

X. The Substitute. 

XI. A Visitor At Collson’s Batch. 

XII. Adding Insult To Injury. 

XIII. A Kiss For Nellie But None For Pete. 

XIV. In Which Father and Son Agree. 

XV. The Meeting In Bilkin’s Hall. 

XVI. An Intercession. 

XVII. “Where They Keep Little Babies.” 

XVIII. A Wise Dog. 

XIX. Where Americans Are Foreigners in Their 
Own Land. 

XX. Laws Polymorphic. 

XXI. And Law That Is Not. 


5 



XXII. The Calvary of Coal Land. 

XXIII. The Agitator’s Wife. 

XXIV. The Point of View. 

XXV. A SURFACE TRAGEDY: Act One: The 

Clouds Gather. 

XXVI. A SURFACE TRAGEDY: Act Two: The 

Clouds Break. 

XXVII. A SURFACE TRAGEDY: Act Three: The 
Price of Liberty. 

XXVIII. Deliration. 

XXIX. Soldiers and Peace. 

XXX. The Crisis. 

XXXI. In Which One Talks First Principles; An¬ 
other Talks Sense. 

EPILOGUE 


r, 


IN THE CARBON HILLS 


CHAPTER I. 

WHEN FRIENDSHIP WEARS THE CLOVEN HOOF 

It certainly should have been gloomy in Carbonia that 
night. A long-continued rain made still more desolate 
the bleak aspect of fields not yet growing, and roads 
almost impassable still muddier. Instead, there were 
signs of much happiness in the squatty double row of 
miners’ houses chiefly comprising the village. Here and 
there through a window uncurtained and without blind 
shadows and fire-gleams from open grates mingled with 
the light of kerosene lamps and the shrill strain of a 
steel-strung German fiddle. Fuel is plentiful in Car¬ 
bonia, and a fire agreeable on a cold wet night in April 
or May. 

In other, better furnished, and better lighted, homes 
neighborly groups gathered in the “best rooms” to dis¬ 
cuss and quietly celebrate the prospective resumption of 
work, ending probably with a light repast followed by a 
few tunes on the parlor-organ with singing. These in¬ 
struments were not scarce in our village nor good voices 
a rarity: we had many Welsh. But the days of the cheap 
piano were not come, hence, to the best of my knowledge 
there were but two in Carbonia proper, and an extra one 
in the superintendent’s home on the hill. 

7 



8 


In The Carbon Hills 


Emily Morris played her oft-moved Steinway when 
select company came. Mrs. Maloney allowed her two 
year old “Pathrick” to do the same on hers, sometimes 
with his fingers, sometimes with a handled beer mug. 
But at this hour “Pathrick” the chubby was sleeping, 
and all the beer mugs and “schooners” at Maloney’s were 
making other music. The clink of glass mingled with the 
harsh voices of strong men in the saloon at the cross¬ 
roads. 

Trade at Maloney’s had for sometime been in a decided 
slump, and such as the genial Irishman had done was 
mostly “on tick.” But a sudden turn in village afifairs 
had shaken off depression. That day news came to the 
miners that the new company would start the mine in 
full the next morning. Every man was to report for 
duty. Also Maloney had received license for another 
year, hence the assurance in immediate prospect of both 
food and drink. After a long period of slack work, un¬ 
certain pays, and final bankruptcy, through foreclosure 
by some financial interest in the nearby town of Colville, 
it was no wonder Carbonia exulted. 

At this moment there stood at the half open door a 
young man in the garb of the mine, and with a still 
lighted safety lamp hanging by a stout hook to his heavy 
leather belt. He kicked a little of the heavy clayish mud 
from his knee-high boots and shook from himself as much 
water as he could. Then he entered the warm, cheery, 
well lighted, smoke-filled room, to be acclaimed immedi¬ 
ately by a long line of men crowded at the bar. 

The glow of Maloney’s lamps reflected in the mirror 
back of the bar-aisle the upper part of a finely-propor¬ 
tioned body, with deep chest and massive shoulders un¬ 
usual even among this room full of fine physiques. The 
frank, dark eyes looking for a moment at themselves in 
the mirror across the bar, the high forehead from which 
the miner’s cap had been removed because of its wet- 


In The Carbon Hills 


9 


ness, the smooth-shaven face wrinkled just then with a 
slight smile at the boisterous friendliness of a large 
hound whose acquaintance with the newcomer seemed of 
long standing, the look of complaisance yet pity at the 
scene before him, all denoted intellect and morality equal 
in proportion to the physical gifts. 

He turned from the dog and the picture of men’s weak¬ 
ness where men are strongest and set his safety-lamp be¬ 
side his cap. Then he strode forward among the group 
to greet a gray-headed, coal-scarred old miner. Several 
voices clamored the third or fourth time for the young 
miner to take a drink with them; one or two demonstra¬ 
tively addressed maudlin terms of endearment repugnant 
to a real man at all times, trebly so to this one at that 
moment. To all he replied with equal frankness yet 
determination : 

“No, thanks just the same; I only came in to get out 
of the rain for a minute and get a smoke—a dime’s worth, 
Maloney,” he added as the pudgy saloonkeeper reached 
into the long box of Pittsburg Stogies and shoved them 
across with the words: “Smoke ’em on me, Morris—new 
license today.” 

“So MacDonald was telling me,” the miner replied, let¬ 
ting the dime lie on the counter, and, so far as Eldred 
Morris was concerned it remained there. The men at the 
other end of the room talked on among themselves, 
scowling, indifferent, contemptuous, according as their 
nature, regarding the veiled rebuff just received from the 
new fireboss. For a mine official to refuse drinks when 
off duty was unusual to say the least. 

Having lighted one of the long, rough cigars Eldred 
Morris turned to the old man with the dog. The miner 
was sipping slowly and very deliberately a glass of beer. 
In common with the rest of those present Enoch Collson 
had accepted this treat of Maloney’s. The young man 
held out to him one of the stogies. 


10 


In The Carbon Hills 


“Have a smoke, Enoch,” he suggested, to which the old 
miner replied: “No, lad, I’d rather me corn-cob,” and 
proceeded to contentedly puff away, totally oblivious of 
the fact that it was out. He leaned back against the 
brass rail. 

“I just come along with Est’er or I shouldn’t be here,” 
he explained, looking into the room beyond the bar-end 
where a raven-haired girl moved lithely about, whistling 
as vivaciously as she moved, and as buoyantly contented, 
seemingly, as if Maloney’s back rooms were a palace 
and she its queen. Indeed and so they were to Esther, 
for usually her duties as general housemaid to Carbonia 
and its environs took her to less pretentious homes than 
this. “Nor Est’er,” ruminated the old miner. “This aint 
no place for a girl as young an’ lively as her.” Then, 
with a feeble movement of his foot: “Get down, Pete, 
you old ragskallamuffin, an’ go off home an’ stay with 
Nellie.’ 

Stepping to the door he swung it open and forced the 
great hound outside where his overly-demonstrative 
pawing with clayey feet could add nothing further in that 
line to the young fireboss’s clothes. 

“But Est’er wont be here on’y a bit; Wilkes’s wants 
her t’ help ’em straighten up till they’n got one stiddy. 
More’s the pity, Eldred, Est’er’s the wrong un t’old a 
place long.” 

The eyes of the younger man turned interrogatively 
from the open door of the rear room. “Do you know, 
Collson, if those Wilkes’s the banker in Colville has got 
to take Number I Mine are the same as you and dad 
knew ?” 

“The same old Roger as him an’ yer dad was near 
lynched by the schule deerecters at Ca'rbonville when we 
three was all young like you an’ Tom, an’ yer dad an’ 
Roger was blacklisted for spoutin’ for the union. Yer 
dad still spouts a bit, as you know, Eldred,” the old man 


In The Carbon Hills 


11 


sipped the last of his beer. “Roger he took to the t’other 
side of the fence after that come off—had to to keep peace 
in the fam’ly. Leased a bit of a mine out there an’ did 
pritty well, I hear, an’ now through old Amos Rummel 
he’s got this.” 

“I hear the old pit’s to have a new name,” suggested 
Morris, knocking an inch of gray ash to the floor. “It’s 
to be The Effie from now on, so Superintendent Turley 
tells me. I wonder if that’s in honor of Mrs. Wilkes or 
the daughter?” 

Collson stood in silent reminiscence for a moment, 
while the young man took his safety lamp from the wet 
boards and hooked it in his belt. 

“Most likely the Missis, lad, most likely. Effie Wilkes 
an’ yer mother was both schule ma’ams earnin’ twenty- 
five dollars a month an’ board around when them two 
young minin’ lads made ’em believe they could injiy life 
better an’ have almost as much money as that teachin’ 
their own as might be, you know,” the old fellow’s eyes 
twinkled into the smiling face of the fireboss merrily. 
“An’ fer the balance of the Winter after they had a 
double weddin’ Carbonville had no schule.” 

Eldred Morris had heard all this before from his 
mother, also that they had lived near each other at 
Wilkes’s first mine where Elizabeth, the daughter, and 
Eldred, the son, had played together as little boys and 
girls will. Morris bore on the back of one hand a vivid 
scar where his playmate had accidentally or purposely 
cut him with a razor-like butcher knife surreptitiously 
“borrowed” from Effie Wilkes’s kitchen. The remem¬ 
brance of this period of the young man’s life was much 
dimmed, the scar and Emily Morris’s stories of the vicis¬ 
situdes of her early married life alone remained vivid. 
But the room was warm and the rain not quite over, so 
it pleased the youth to let the old miner ramble in The 
Past. 


12 


In The Carbon Hills 


“Effie Wilkes,” Collson resumed slowly, “was one of 
them upstart little bodies as is never satisfied, an' Roger 
was pritty much the same in another dereckshun. An’ by 
the time her Lizbeth girl was born—which was a year 
or two after the first had died—Efifie had Roger turned 
into a small pit owner." The old miner purposely left 
out of his narrative a certain part he himself had in 
bringing about this change. “Your mother was one of 
the contented kind, an’, after all, gets along p’rhaps just 
as well.” 

“Different viewpoints, Uncle Enoch,” soliloquized the 
young man. “Each of the girls just followed the line of 
least resistance, no doubt,” he added as they went 
through the swinging door. The rain had by this time 
abated. They were met outside by a joyous dog who 
had refused to go home to keep company with Nellie. 
“Effie Wilkes’s idea seems to pay better; I heard today 
they'd bought the big house on the hill as well as the 
mine, and that old Rummel was merely agent for some¬ 
one else.” 

“Aye, if he was, lad; if he was. In forty more years 
of minin’ life, Eldred Morris, youn learn that there’s 
more in mine ownin’ than appears on the surfiss. That’s 
just as sure as that all the dangers a young man just 
startin’ as a mine official like yerself has to face aint 
stated public on the Question Papers the State Board 
gives him,” turning for a moment and looking back to¬ 
ward the room they had left. There men were paying— 
or would pay—compound interest on the round of free 
drinks with which Maloney’s had ushered in the new era 
at The Effie and The Double Row. 


CHAPTER II. 

“MUD FOR POOR NELLIE; ROCKS FOR PETE” 

Some days later Eldred Morris took his correspond¬ 
ence lessons and a late copy of The Colliery Engineer up 
to Collson’s Batch. It would of necessity be sometime 
before a positive answer came from Scranton to an in¬ 
quiry he had sent, and when he and the former school- 
ma'am-mother stuck on a problem it was sometimes re¬ 
ducible—in a practical sense at least—by the combined 
efforts of the young fireboss and the old lampman. It 
were hard to say which was the most helpful to the min¬ 
ing student at that period of his course of study in the 
great mail-university which even then was doing so much 
for our men: the free-will offering of Collson’s forty 
years' experience in coal mines or Emily Morris in that 
she excelled. One of her boys she could—to use her 
own words—make nothing of; the other was determined 
to make something of himself. But Collson had other 
difficulties to solve this night. 

It was nearly dark and not very warm, although in¬ 
creasing heat had turned the mud on the road before The 
Batch into tough clay. The old man, at great risk to his 
joints, sat in the little yard almost enroofed by a wide- 
spreading pine. He rose with a threatening gesture as 
something lying in the grass moved when the footsteps 
of Morris came nearer, admonishing the offenders to 
“Keep down, you stinkin’ ragskallamuffins!” And until 
the fireboss was safely past and had taken a seat the fear 
of the old miner’s stick kept them down. 


13 


14 


In The Carbon Hills 


“Whew!!” came in some amusement. 

“Light up, lad, light up! We can talk after," Collson 
urged. 

Eldred Morris hurriedly filled his pipe and lit it, and 
both puffed in silence for a while as if their very lives 
depended on the quantity of smoke they could produce. 
Behind them the front door and the back were open as 
well as the windows, although, as I have said, the night 
was chilly. 

“Do you see ’em?” Collson asked, pointing with his 
pipe-stem to a dog lying nose pointing the house, and an¬ 
other a short disance from the picket gate. 

Morris looked into the semi-dark and nodded. “I can 
smell ’em,” he mumbled between his teeth. 

“Watch they don’t get up a minute,” the old man sidled 
into the room. He returned a moment later with a 
chunk of bread and meat. 

“I smelled it away down the road,” smiled the young 
man, pressing the tobacco deeper into the pipe-bowl. 
“Thought somebody was burning a hair-sofa covered 
with leather.” 

The old man reflected in silence. He was too busy to 
talk, mumbling over his bread and meat as one famished. 
Morris respected the interval; he understood the old 
miner. 

“Aye, lad,” Collson gulped hard on the dry bread, 
“dogs bin like men—some men an’ some dogs,” he added 
reflectively, “that Pete hound for instance. Their acshuns 
stirrin’ up trouble an’ stink for others as well as ’em- 
selves.” He filled his corn-cob again. “Like some men 
he’s never content wi’out stirrin’ up trouble, an’ when 
he’s stirred it up he aint content.” 

Morris thought the allusion anent his father and one or 
two others who were a source of irritation at The Bffie. 
He smoked on and said nothing. The old miner com¬ 
menced again. 


In The Carbon Hills 


15 


“An' there’s wimmin, Eldred, as is pritty much like 
the tarrier yonder: willin’ ter be led inter trouble as 
they dont like when they’n got it, do ’em Nellie?” ad¬ 
dressing a little brown bundle just discernible by the 
lamp’s rays shining through the open door: a mere furry 
atom of dog lying uneasily (yet not daring to move for 
fear of the stick) among a nondescript assortment of 
pots, pans, pokers, stove-lifters, old pit-lamps and old 
shoes—aye, even a great thick coffee-cup without handle 
such as one sees in restaurants sometimes. Collson 
switched again to the dogs. 

“They wasn’t satisfied to let well ernuff alone an’ stay 
quiet-like doin’ their duty at home among rispectible dogs 
an’ things, but Pete, yonder, like the great hulkin’ hound 
he is must leave his job of keepin’ tramps out an’ Nellie 
catchin’ rats an’ coax her away. Here they goes a-traep- 
sin today over the countryside an’ makin’ up wi’ new 
acquaintances as warn’t as good as the old.” 

Morris sensed the denouement. He offered no sug¬ 
gestion nor asked any question, but quietly smoked on 
with his eyes on the two abashed canines. 

“I’d just come from the pit tonight,” Collson contin¬ 
ued, “when Bobbie Burns MacDonald come runnin’ up 
an’ tellin’ me Pete and Nellie was out beyond Mike 
Gawan’s, ‘an’ both of ’em’s gone mad,’ says he, ‘an’ Mike’s 
a-loadin’ up his rifle to shoot ’em.’ 

“‘How be ’em actin’?’ says I, startin’ off without cap 
nor coat. 

“‘Nellie’s a-rollin’ over an’ over, Uncle Enoch,’ says 
the lad, ‘an’ Pete he’s a-snortin’ an’ a-blowin’ his nose 
likes somethin’s in it as he can’t get out.’ 

“‘Anything else?’ says I, like Doc Hilman askin’ yer 
where the pain is. ‘Any pecul’ar smell, or anythin’ like 
that?’ 

“ ‘Yep,’ says Bobbie; ‘smells like our stove on Sunday 


i6 


In The Carbon Hills 


mornin’ when mother cuts Dad's hair an’ Wallace warms 
his rubbers.’ 

“ ‘Skunks,’ says I; an’ told Bobbie it would be a toss- 
up whether he’d be a doctor like Hilman or a barber like 
his mother. ‘Youn got signs of ’em both,’ says I.” 

At this interesting stage Collson, who had retained 
hold on the stick, as well as keeping an eye on the dogs, 
jumped up very suddenly, moved a few yards and as 
suddenly came back and attacked the remainder of his 
improvised supper. “Missed Pete; thought he’d sneaked 
in round the back,” said the old man, putting a piece of 
meat in his mouth and letting Morris’s curiosity grow 
while he chewed it. This accomplished he continued: 

“Well, me an’ Bobbie got there at last, findin’ ’em 
pritty near up to the blocks, an' a great hulkin’ lot of 
boys a-jumpin’ an’ a-shoutin' round ’em an’ tryin’ to coax 
’em back to have more fun. I druv 'em off an' called the 
dogs; I dassent touch ’em . . . But they wasn’t like some 
humans: they knowed when to quit, an’ we come at last 
to the row. There Mike Gawan—that fool of a stable- 
chap—was standin’ at his door when the percession 
passed, me in front, Nellie next, an’ Pete bringin’ up the 
rear, an’ between laughin’ says he, ‘Collson, yer Pete-dog 
looks like he’s tendin’ his own funeral.’ 

“‘It’s a pity you wasn't tendin' yours,’ says I, callin’ 
the dogs away from the wimmin folks as was a-laughin’ 
fit to choke at the carryin's on.” 

“It was Gawan who tagged your name on the grove 
where the dancing goes on, wasn’t it?” suggested Morris. 

“It was that," Collson replied truculently, lapsing again 
into silence while he ate. Morris with difficulty kept a 
straight face. At length the second helping of bread was 
down and the old lampman started once more. 

“But they got through the blocks with me a-callin’ an’ 
a-callin,' Nellie a-bumpin’ into first this thing an’ then 
that, blind as a bat in both eyes, Eldred, an’ both of ’em 


In The Carbon Hills 


17 


a-battin, an' a-battin' to try an’ get the dirt an’—that— 
out," he almost shivered. “An’ of course the first place 
they made for was their bed behind the stove,” the old 
fellow said pityingly, “but I had to drive ’em out, an’ have 
binn sittin' here all night to keep ’em out. But they got in 
once this evenin’, as per’aps youn notice, Eldred, that the 
house is a little in need of a-airin 7 ’ 

Morris agreed it was, at the same time finding it hard 
to repress an outburst he knew well would affront the 
old man. Collson saw nothing funny in his story; to him 
it was a serious affair. He was as mournful as a preacher 
at a funeral. 

“Yes," he started again, “it’s surely in need of air, an’ 
spite of me that big hulk who’s hangin’ his dobbin’ll 
skulk round the back every once in a while an’ me 
through the front to head him off. Youn notice if youn 
go round the back that besides what I’ve thrown out 
here I’ve used up every blessed thing that’s loose an’ I 
haven't had neither tea nor coffee tonight,” which corela¬ 
tion Eldred failed to grasp until Collson added quite 
calmly: 

“Would you mind holdin' this stick again an’ watchin’ 
’em a bit while I get that pot from under the hound an’ 
make meself a pot of tea; but first bring me in a few 
chunks of soft mud for poor Nellie an’ some of them 
rocks off the road yonder for Pete. I wont darst go to 
bed tonight in such stink, not even get up when youn 
gone, Eldred, as the big ragskallamuffin is quicker’11 my 
legs; nor I dassent shut the doors.” 

Eldred Morris was a pretty serious chap himself, but 
Collson’s story and the poor old fellow's predicament up¬ 
set his equilibrium. By the time his old friend brought 
out a steaming pot of tea laughter had driven all thought 
of mining problems out of his mind, and there the matter 
rested until a more appropriate occasion offered. 


CHAPTER III. 


WHERE SAINT AND DEVIL MET 

A few weeks passed with steady work at The Effie. 
Collson’s orphaned niece Esther fulfilled her mission with 
Mrs. Maloney, and spent an agreeable ten days helping 
Elizabeth and Mrs. Wilkes put things to rights at the big 
house. The girl’s brief stay there had been the indirect 
means of bringing Emily Morris and her old school-friend 
together, and this friendship was augmented by a re¬ 
newed acquaintance between Roger Wilkes and John 
Morris. 

The families were genuinely glad to meet each other. 
The operator, even less than his wife and daughter, had 
lost little of the mining-camp spirit of general friendli¬ 
ness as yet. The ultimate issue of success or failure at 
the new place was too much in doubt for false dignity or 
mental elevation, and none knew this better than the 
former miner himself. Also was he shrewd enough to 
let nothing at that precarious period stand in the way of 
keeping the men in good hurnor, and fostering a spirit 
of democracy, particularly among the better class. His 
name, with the promise of a sum of money, headed the 
first subscription paper taken around in the interest of a 
sick miner. Later he promised his own and his family’s 
attendance at a “benefit dance” to be held in the former 
Billkin’s Hall. 

Oddfellow and Pythia of Carbonia had erased the 
name; the memory lingered. “Fraternal Hall” was the 


18 


In The Carbon Hills 


19 


common meeting-ground of our village. Here men met 
in beneficial secrecy on week nights, for a similar pur¬ 
pose openly on Sunday. Methodist and Baptist held ser¬ 
vices alternately presided over by itinerant preachers 
from the college town. Sunday school also was a feature, 
which ensemble not being fully as cosmopolitan as our 
village was completed by an occasional “benefit” or 
fraternal hop, and now and then a church party for The 
Ladies-Aid. 

Mr. David Thomas, it may be adduced, had suffered 
one of the frequent accidents common to his occupation 
as a miner. He limped on crutches to the hall where lust 
and virtue, the creed of Christ and the wiles of Satan, 
beauty and ugliness, human and material, had each in 
turn, and sometimes together, temporary home. John 
Morris, Uncle Collson, and Donald MacDonald repre¬ 
sented the men; Emily Morris, Elizabeth Wilkes, and 
Mary MacDonald the women folks. Refreshments were 
provided by the ladies themselves and given gratuitously. 

Esther was there, of course. Esther never missed a 
dance. Temporarily she had a situation at the banker’s 
in Colville, from whence, with persistent vagary, she 
came to Carbonia with the dashing Rummel, later, es¬ 
cort of Miss Wilkes to the hall. In this Tom Morris 
had acquiesced. It was his only alternative. The ca¬ 
prices of his vivacious sweetheart caused chagrin border¬ 
ing closely on fear in the old lampman and Tom’s mother. 

“Esther should a been a bye, me laddie,” Donald Mac¬ 
Donald told Tom Morris; “she’s too devilish cleever in 
sowin’ wild oats fer a pritty black-eyed lassie as she.” 

“Wild oats grow and bloom in the life-garden of boys 
as well as girls, sometimes, Donald,” ventured Emily 
Morris quietly over a pair of woolen pit socks she was 
knitting for Eldred, “unless nipped in time by the frosts 
that come with marriage.” 

“Emmy” Morris: by which patronymic we knew and 


20 


In The Carbon Hills 


called our beloved old school-ma’am more often than the 
correct “Emily:” had read Omar as well as Homer in 
her youth, and Emerson as well as Pilgrim’s Progress in 
her maturity. Also had she perused closely the ever- 
continued Book of Humanity, which is the greatest teach¬ 
er of them all. 

“True ye are, Emmy; true ye are. My ane Mary says 
as I—why, hello Eldred,” he broke off on the entrance 
of the young fireboss, “we was just talkin’ o’ the benefit 
a’ the hall the neet. Tammas, thear, is goin’ wi’ Esther, 
of coorse, an’ whose lassie may yours be fer the dancin’?” 

Familiarity was not at a premium in Carbonia. 

Eldred Morris did not answer at once. He pulled a 
chair toward the door and proceeded to discharge a self- 
imposed duty. From the upper part of the heavy brass 
safety-lamp he unscrewed the bottom, having first turned 
the lock with a key the fireboss was privileged to carry; 
the miners were not. Then from a little shelf outside he 
took a small stiff-bristled brush and thoroughly cleaned 
the wire gauze. Emily Morris looked proudly over her 
spectacles, a faint interrogative smile lighting a beauti¬ 
fully full and winsome face, mother-love shining from 
eyes as dark as his. She was quite as curiosity-inclined 
as MacDonald but—calm as the Scot—she waited. 

“Pve promised Margaret Thomas,” Eldred said at 
length, and the mother's smile faded, leaving only the 
love evident. The pleasant evening Effie and Elizabeth 
Wilkes had spent with them had—but who shall fathom 

the tortuous path of a mother’s hopes and—fears? 
******** 

Fraternal Hall was ablaze with the light of a multi¬ 
tudinous array of kerosene lamps bracketed on the walls. 
John Morris bustled importantly and Roger Wilkes made 
Collson sit down with little Nellie and his “rumaticks” 
for company, while he took Pete out the back door, a 
little by the neck and a great deal by the ear, much to 


In The Carbon Hills 


21 


the alarm of the ladies. Then he had to finish the job 
by giving to Bobbie Burns MacDonald a silver half- 
dollar to keep the old hound out of the hall. 

“Can’t — I — take — him —back't — Uncle —Enoch’s ?” 
whined Bobbie, after he had made sure the silver was 
good by putting it in his mouth. Mary MacDonald had 
been that day too busy baking pies, buns, and bread for 
the ‘‘benefit" and her own brood of eight or nine to fasten 
with needle and thread that which Bobbie had destroyed 
with jack-knife and fishing-hook. And Bobbie Burns 
MacDonald was too canny to place a bran new silver 
half-dollar in such precarious jeopardy as that! 

“Can't — I take — Pete — t’Uncle— E—noch’s?’’ he 
gurgled again with a rising emphasis, and still hanging 
on to the hound’s left ear. 

Roger Wilkes, rotund and jolly, and beaming with 
good humor partly engendered by nature and still more 
by the animated scene indoors, which recalled many 
such times he and Jack Morris had had together with 
the former schoolma’ams on The Monongahela, smiled 
at boy and dog, sensing no doubt on the instant the con¬ 
flicting desire of the lad. Bobbie wanted the money, also 
to see the dancing. Wilkes ran his fingers through his 
hair. He expressed his solution thus: 

“No, my boy, it’s no use doing that—they’ve just come 
from there. Mr. Collson locked ’em both in (evidently 
referring to the terrier, too) but he forgot to put panes 
in the back window and the hound there, or the ratter, 
pulled his pit-pants out of the hole.” 

It is not likely Bobbie Burns heard half of this dis¬ 
course on shrewd doggishness. Apparently his mind had 
been running toward a solution of his own, for he blurt¬ 
ed out as he pulled vigorously on the unwilling ears: 

“I— know — where’s — a — place — so — I — d-o-o-o ; 
our — coal — house — aint — got — no — winders — 
it’s — gota -.” 



22 


In The Carbon Hills 


Whatever it had Roger Wilkes did not hear. Someone 
behind him called and he went in, leaving dog and boy 
to fight the matter out between themselves. But it 
could not have been much more intricate of negotiation 
than Collson’s pit pants as substitute for broken panes, 
for fifteen minutes later Pete was again enjoying the 
dance from the rear door while Bobbie Burns was stuff¬ 
ing himself and a favorite companion or two with pro¬ 
digious quantities of lemonade and sandwiches. 

In the meantime affairs went noisily on in the hall. 
Donald MacDonald’s fiddle and Micky Gawan’s violon¬ 
cello screamed out the prelude to “The Devil’s Dream.” 
The older matrons subsided into chairs placed beneath 
the reflectors on the walls, the maids and young matrons 
assented to or refused requests from the males to be¬ 
come their partners as is the way of young womanhood. 
Eldred Morris bowed to Margaret Thomas, and led that 
young lady from beside the man on crutches for whom 
the party was being held. Mr. Rummel led Miss Wilkes 
out onto the floor from a seat between her mother and 
Emmy Morris, and Tom took the now more tractable 
Esther for his partner, just as with all her crotchety love 
he preferred her for his sweetheart. 

Thus the dance went merrily on amid a veritable babel 
of tongues, each sett-ending being the excuse for the 
young bucks to leave their ladies drinking lemonade 
while they quenched their thirst behind the hall from a 
large keg bought unlawfully at Maloney’s retail house. 
Thus are the purposes of the best committees made void. 

In the changing of partners Eldred Morris dropped 
out for a spell and watched the dancing from beside his 
mother and Mrs. Wilkes. Elizabeth, at Rummel’s side, 
prepared for the first stage of a quadrille, and in getting 
into position just happened to look toward her mother 
and—smiled. The dark eyes of the young man, prob¬ 
ably mistaking the smile for him, sent back an answer 


In The Carbon Hills 


23 


accompanied by the doffing of his hat, which was fol¬ 
lowed instantly by the gaze of the blue eyes of Eliza¬ 
beth dropping instantly to the floor with a reddening of 
her cheeks and a confused answer of the young man to a 
question of Mrs. Wilkes’s. 

“Salute yer pardner!” cried the Caller, and Miss Wilkes 
bowed to the perfectly-built and still more perfectly-at¬ 
tired young gentleman from Colville. At the interval she 
broke away with the exclamation: “My, but it’s hot; I 
think I’ll not dance again for a while.” 

She went over to the group beneath the reflector, while 
Rummel sought a partner in Esther. The next sett Miss 
Wilkes danced with Eldred Morris. 

“I thought you’d forgotten your old friends,” he ven¬ 
tured, standing beside her in the forming ring, straight 
as an unstormed hickory with the physical majesty of 
the oak. 

Elizabeth crimsoned as she rather diffidently lifted his 
hand in her’s, and let her eyes fall on the scar she had 
made when a little girl. The dance is conducive of un¬ 
usual liberties. 

“The shoe’s on the other foot,” she quibbled, as they 
moved to the music’s rymth, gazing at the chiffon-clad 
Margaret passing them. Then, irrelevantly: “That Miss 
Thomas is quite beautiful, don’t you think?” Eldred re¬ 
mained for a moment silent. “That light blue is set off 
so well with the pink around her waist.” Yet her eyes 
were wavering from his to the clean-shaven face, the 
neat silk shirt with an appropriate tie, and clothing well 
made that fitted superbly, and his eyes met hers and they 
both smiled: she at being caught and he at her womanly 
naivete. Then his gaze took in the blue silk around her 
own waist, the pure white lawn and the real Cluny lace 
(which, however, might just as well have been Valen¬ 
ciennes for all the miner knew) the soft, full breasts 
still tumultous from exertion, and the fine curving form 


24 


In The Carbon Hills 


his arm had but now encircled, and the frank and truth¬ 
ful appraisement of Miss Margaret's charms he had tact¬ 
lessly framed was modified, in the telling at least. 

“Miss Thomas is a nice girl,” he said simply, drawing 
in with his breath the fragrance of a bunch of tuberoses 
fastened on the bodice of Elizabeth’s dress. 

“We need a girl,” she said, freezing with conscious 
dignity; “you might bring her up some night.” 

For a moment the young miner’s face turned a deep 
scarlet, and his tongue itched with a retort in kind. But 
Elizabeth was young and—a woman, he thought, and he 
was all of three or four years older! The <Eff erence i n 
environment had perhaps spoiled this only child of her 
parents? Mature Eldred! so wise at twenty-three!! 
Then she smiled and took his scarred hand in hers, 
swinging it back and forth as she moved lightly and 
lithely with him to a seat, and tartness gave way to tol¬ 
erance. For the next few minutes she was very sweet 
and gracious, and neither alluded to Margaret, but she 
would not dance again for a while, she said. 

The next half hour Morris spent among the men, taking 
now and then a drink of lemonade, for the hall was very 
warm and illy ventilated. Some of the youths who had 
traversed the back stairs too often grew boisterous, and 
as the night advanced Morris, with his father and the 
village peace-officer, our friend Collson, had their hands 
full. This settled, Eldred came on the floor with Esther, 
and followed in a waltz with Margaret. From beside 
Rummel Miss Wilkes glanced often upon the pair, on 
the man particularly, for he was indeed fair to female 
eyes. What words passed between him and the crippled 
miner’s girl we may not know, but we can surmise by 
his taking at the end of the waltz a pocket-book from his 
hip pocket and, crumpled, slipping into Margaret’s hand 
either coin or note. A minute later this lay in the in- 


In The Carbon Hills 


25 


jured miner’s pocket and on his tongue thanks and grat¬ 
itude for an unusual gift. 

When Morris sought Elizabeth next she coldly re¬ 
pulsed him. “I*ve promised Mr. Rummel for the balance 
of the night,” said she. Then, with that perversity com¬ 
mon to her age and sex she added: “But I see Miss 
Thomas isn’t engaged.” 

Then, Eldred Morris having suddenly engendered a 
dryness of the throat, went down the back stairs this 
time to assuage it! 


CHAPTER IV. 


TICKETS RETURNED 

Samuel Turley was an inveterate foe of union agita¬ 
tion. Also he was the foreman of The Effie. Because of 
this John Morris eventually moved from Carbonia to The 
River. His sons, being satisfied with their berths at the 
mine, and for other reasons we need not mention, re¬ 
mained. For similar reasons the two brothers preferred 
the plateau of our vicinity to the lowlands of The Monon- 
gahela. Summer and Winter passed with Tom at Mary 
MacDonald’s, who, despite her own large brood, made 
room for him. Effie Wilkes, for old acquaintance sake 
did as much for the young mine official. Carbonia had 
no general boarding-house then; we have a fine car¬ 
avansary now in addition to Calabrue’s “hotel,” whose 
boarders were then as now all of one nationality with the 
proprietor. 

Miss Elizabeth Wilkes was seldom at home excepting 
at week ends, her Uncle Turley’s being nearer Colville 
College. Thus matters stood when, after many months 
of persistent effort, Eldred Morris and Enoch Collson 
journeyed all the way from the difference in mine gases, 
both as to specific gravities and symbols, to the increas¬ 
ing of air volumes by splitting and other means. During 
this period the mail had bulged, almost, with solutions 
of technical problems, and the text-books had become 
dog-eared and black with repeated thumbing. Conse¬ 
quently Fireboss Morris made his second step. He was 


26 


In The Carbon Hills 


2 7 

Foreman Morris, now, if you please, and Turley was 
superintendent. 

And here forevermore the old lampman was left be¬ 
hind with Pete and little Nellie. Yet no one in our vil¬ 
lage was less envious in thus dropping to the rear. But 
another friendship—it was hardly more than that at that 
time—was less satisfied to play second fiddle in Eldred 
Morris's life. Yet in this as in burning midnight-oil his 
persistence was pretty near boundless, and as it had thus 
far won out in more tangible affairs he held a private 
opinion that it would win out in this. Alas, Eldred, the 
whimsicalities of a fair maid are more subtle than marsh- 
gas and the whys and wherefores of her actions harder 
to discover than the species of crime known as “graft” 
going on sometimes under the noses of the best of men. 

This self-confidence, and a firm belief in The Bffie's 
future, led the new foreman to invest the greater part of 
his salary in a building and loan association to the end 
that ultimately—with a public reason altogether opposed 
to the real one—there was erected a nice five-roomed 
cottage on an eminence about half-way between Wilkes's 
and the blocks. Even the best of mining men must dis¬ 
semble sometimes. 

In this premise Eldred Morris was not averse to so 
doing, and, being entirely feminine, the much-loved Eliza¬ 
beth sensed this positive feeling and set her mind to repel 
it with that heartlessness that only a woman can indulge 
in when the act of refusal wounds her as well as the man. 
The man, being by nature a coward in affairs of senti¬ 
ment, would either avoid or compromise. The woman 

does neither, as we shall see. 
******** 

It was morning and the sky was leaden, which augurs 
well for a fine evening in Summer. Morris's had moved 
back to the village, change of fortune having placated our 
official gods and change of climate nearly killed Emily 


28 


In The Carbon Hills 


Morris. Unlike the valley of the Monongahela Carbonia 
has no night and morning fogs. 

At Wilkes’s, where the foreman still remained as yet, 
the white-capped Effie poured Eldred’s coffee and her 
own. Elizabeth was still at her Aunt Marion’s, although 
the term of college study was ended for that season. 

“It’s strange,” said her mother across the dishes. “I 
can’t understand why Elizabeth doesn’t want to come 
home, I’m sure,” with a questioning look at her boarder. 

Perhaps Eldred Morris could have told her had not 
a piece of bread Mrs. Wilkes set to brown set itself out 
to get black. As it was he had a chance to resume his 
normal color wdiile she worked among the bread’s gray 
pungency. He rose as she turned. The subject had been 
prompted by a printed circular lying on the table. 

“The play’s the thing at college,” said he, pulling on 
his coat, and quoting from something he had heard some¬ 
where. Shakespeare Eldred Morris knew only by hear¬ 
say—then. Like many another miner-student will he 
soon learned that the marsh-gas of written romance will 
not mix with the mephitic air of a completed mining 
course in the gaining. “But I always fancied Colville 
students’ plays lacked—lacked—oh, didn’t make you feel 
as if the thing was real somehow. Did you ever see one 
there, Mrs. Wilkes?” 

Effie Wilkes sat down again to her coffee. There was 
no mine with its constantly increasing force of men and 
responsibility waiting her finishing. She supped deliber¬ 
ately, looking straight into Eldred’s eyes when she could 
catch them. 

“I never did; but Elizabeth likes them and thinks 
they’re fine,” she replied with a great deal of suggestion 
in the last part of her sentence. “And the students who 
live there haven’t much to do now school’s out.” 

“Well,” asquiesced the big miner, half heartedly, “I 
suppose the students do see beauties in them that we 


In The Carbon Hills 


29 


fellows would miss. And,” he continued, taking with 
diffidence from his evening coat a leather wallet, “it’s no 
more than right they should. I’ll bet if James T. Beard 
could read off stage the dullest page that don't enliven the 
old Colliery Engineer I'd shout myself hoarse with ap¬ 
plause.” 

“I suppose you would,” echoed Mrs. Wilkes, smiling 
quaintly at the broad shoulders moving toward the door, 
her cup poised, elbow resting on the table linen. “The 
alma-mater always has a warm spot in the student’s 
heart,” no doubt recalling her own. 

“Well, mine, Mrs. Wilkes,” returned the young man, 
standing for a moment with his hand on the door-frame, 
“would be rather a peculiar foster-mother; it would cer¬ 
tainly be more appropriate to call it ‘foster-uncles,’ ” 
leaving her to ponder over his allusion to Collson and 
Uncle Samuel’s Mail. 

That morning he purchased by proxy two reserved 
seats for the play, regardless, and gave the lad a second 
quarter to take one with a note to Mrs. Turley’s for 
Elizabeth. He wrote in it no word as to why he did not 
take it himself. The woman for whom it was intended 
did. The boy returned with an addition to what Morris 
sent. A few lines scrawled on the bottom of his own 
note conveyed a terse regret. She had promised Mr. 
Rummel only that morning and of course couldn’t break 
her promise. 

The note and envelope Morris tore to bits and started 
on the tickets, but, thinking better of it, decided on 
another use for them. He’d give them to someone—if 
he could—or get the refund. He was saved the latter. 
Tom was in town when he went down that night, stand¬ 
ing patiently at the window of a dry-goods shop. Morris 
needed nothing more to tell him why the boy was there. 
And, seeing Esther coming out, he thrust the tickets into 


30 


In The Carbon Hills 


his brother’s hand and started off to escape questions. 
Tom followed him, calling on him to stop. 

“We’re moved an’ fixed up and mother’s gettin’ up a 
party to warm the new house she said,” at which rather 
muddled explanation both men smiled. “She an’ dad 
said you was to be sure an’ come—she knows you can’t 
quit Wilkes’s very well until the month’s out—but you 
can bring Lizzie, as mother’s invited her special.” 

Steps passed and repassed the two men. Both stood 
facing the then dirt-road of Colville’s business-center, 
their feet on the pavement curb, eyes staring vacantly at 
the middle of the road. Both had problems peculiarly 
their own yet very much alike. 

“Shall you?” queried the younger, remarking with won¬ 
dering surprise his brother’s unusual reticence and ap¬ 
parent reluctance to discuss the matter. 

“I don’t know,” came the short reply; “it’ll all depend.” 

“’Depend;’ on what?” persisted the innocent. The 
more sophisticated brother was saved the chagrin of a 
deliberate falsehood or the almost as repugnant truth. 
A remarkably pretty black-eyed girl with pleasing fa¬ 
miliarity reached her work-calloused fingers up to the 
big man’s eyes by standing on tip-toes behind him. 

“Who is it?” she asked, her voice slightly tremulous 
with suppressed excitement, expecting him to do exactly 
as he did, take her hands down gently and, turning, hold 
them, smiling back into the sparkling eyes. 

“Esther!” he said, “I didn’t hear you.” Then: “Moth¬ 
er’s work must be agreeing with you: you’re looking 
well.” 

“Do you think so?” replied the girl, turning her crim¬ 
soning confirmation sideways to the miner because she 
had thought a profile view seen in the mirror of the shop 
she had just left made her just the weest bit better look¬ 
ing than standing straight front. And in the avoidance 
of his eyes there was a suggestion of diffidence strong 


In The Carbon Hills 


3 i 


as her dominance over Tom. Knowing these facts and 
the terrible ending, I sometimes wonder if Eldred Mor¬ 
ris had—but then what is to be . . . One need not 

necessarily be a fatalist to believe that some things in 
this life are preordained. 

“You’ll be at mother’s party?” Eldred continued. 

“Catch me missing it!” the vivacious Esther stepped a 
brief imitation “clog” upon the pavement stones, her 
color rising and her dress upheld the teeniest bit 
above ankles touched by soft kid shoe-tops. Her eyes 
caught Eldred’s and dropped in deep bashfulness in¬ 
stantly, yet in his own there was nothing but smiling 
amusement. The younger brother’s gaze was riveted on 
a passing team, his mind on Esther and hers on him. 
Something unspoken had passed between them before 
Morris came on the scene. The elder brother sensed 
this when the girl, with a side glance at Tom and her 
eyes smiling rougishly, said: “Count me in where’s lots 
of fellers every time,” to which Eldred, who enjoyed dis¬ 
comfiture in others, sometimes, if harmless, as much as 
Esther, added: 

“That’s right,” giving an assumed approval to the 
girl’s intentions by placing a hand on her shoulder, “have 
a good time while you can, before you both get old and 
full of troubles like me-.” 

Esther’s sudden outburst of rippling laughter broke the 
suggestive sentence, and setting Morris off his guard 
brought from him something more direct than he had 
intended to say. Tom said nothing but still stared into 
the distance. 

“You are gettin’ a little gray since you’re bossin’,” 
Esther smilingly retorted, and the foreman agreed that 
it was so, of course, falling into the young woman’s 
humor. 

“I found a couple of real gray one 9 this morning, but 
as I pulled them out the girls won’t be any the wiser.” 



32 


In The Carbon Hills 


To Tom he said: “Tell mother to invite Margaret and 
lots of the girls for sure; I want to get acquainted before 
they’re all picked out. There’s nothing like variety to 
keep up interest in life and—love, as Esther says.” 

The last sentence came with such sudden gravity, 
however, that the younger people placed on the words 
full value, and wondered who the lucky miner’s daugh¬ 
ter would be, and what had happened to cool entirely the 
half-earnest courtship between the foreman and Miss 
Wilkes. It brought speech to Tom’s lips. Quite seriously 
he suggested: 

“Then you ought to have been at Collson’s Grove the 
other night,” with a sidelong and gloomy glance at the 
girl beside him, “you’d seen-.” 

Tom Morris’s description of what had happened at the 
grove suddenly ceased when the roses in Esther's cheeks 
faded to an intense white. Her back turned to the broth¬ 
ers and, head tilted, she started off down the street. Evi¬ 
dently this subject had been discussed before. 

“Esther!” called the already repentant youth moving 
quickly past Eldred, “Esther, I won’t,” his voice sinking 
but intensely pleading. 

The scene was so soon started and finished that Morris 
had hardly time to catalogue his semi-mortification and 
surprise at what seemed to him as unmanliness on his 
brother’s part when both young people resumed their 
almost normal appearance and former places beside him. 
It had little significance in his estimation: a bit of flir¬ 
tation or some trivial escapade with the town boys who 
frequented Carbonia’s open-air dances. Eldred forbore 
to question either regarding it, and the conversation 
turned again to the housewarming at Mrs. Morris’s and 
the chances of conquest among the prettier village girls. 

“I haven’t had a chance to see many of them lately, 
Esther, except you and Margaret,” the big flatterer per¬ 
sisted in his oblique course regarding love, “except those 



In The Carbon Hills 


33 


who don’t seem to care for my attentions toward them,” 
from which the reader will perhaps form a more accurate 
hypothesis than did Tom. 

The pertinence of the remark wasn’t lost on his sweet¬ 
heart, however. 

“They say there’s as good fish in the sea as was ever 
catched,” Esther modified the foreman’s temporary 
anguish, to which Eldred agreed with a smile and a long 
glance at the soft rounded curves snuggling so neatly 
to clinging lawn white as drifting snow. At that moment 
Eldred Morris envied his brother Tom. 


CHAPTER V. 

THE MINER AND THE MAID 

John Morris poked his head into the kitchen of the 
new home where Mary MacDonald, Emily Morris and 
Esther were putting the preliminary touches to a lunch 
that was to be served as part of the festivities. 

“Ain’t you wimmen pretty near done?” he asked, 
standing on the floor of the larger living-room which 
was bared of carpet and furniture for the occasion. The 
“kitchen dances” of Carbonia were generally as harmless 
as they were frequent; as morally innocuous as the 
dances in the woods were immorally virulent. Home 
festivities which included the young folks were rarely 
considered eclat without this adjunct. Here the patrons 
were chosen and few; at the grove they were indiscrim¬ 
inate and many. “The folks’ll soon be here, Emmy; 
here’s Pete, now.” The old hound lifted his nose to the 
miner approvingly. “Collson’s cornin’ with MacDonald 
down the blocks.” Then, receiving no reply: “Ain’t you 
about tired out already?” 

Evidently this was intended for Mrs. Morris. She 
sank to a chair with a tired sigh that belied the smile in 
her eyes. She answered : 

“I am, John Morris, but Pm happy, too. This will be 
the first time for a good many months my boys have 
both been with their mother, and, oh, here’s my Eldred 
and Tom now—” (when Emily Morris was pleased Eld¬ 
red and Tom were her boys; when vexed she referred to 
them as “chips off the old block for stubbornness and 

34 


In The Carbon Hills 


35 


everything else that’s bad,” in which she differed not a 
great deal from many another good woman)—“and,” 
reaching out her hand, “welcome, Elizabeth, dear, and 
Margaret—Esther, get a chair for your Uncle Collson, 
child—no, Mr. Rummel’s young, he can stand.” 

A slight acidity accompanied the latter, but immedi¬ 
ately sweetened in the eyes of the Colville youth. The 
polished, courteous manners—particularly when address¬ 
ing our elder women—needed not the immaculate beauty 
of raiment always characteristic of this heir of the 
banker. The roguish blue eyes needed not the fragrant 
bouquet upon the lapel of the coat beneath them to create 
a favorable impression on the ladies, at least, nor the ac¬ 
curately-laid and faintly-perfumed hair the adjuncts of 
artistic ensemble in the mauve silk tie lying, lone dia¬ 
mond studded, upon a perfectly laundered and perfectly 
white background; neither silk-clad ankles and patent- 
leather pumps to show that here was indeed the finished 
product of a social environment in such wise as our boys 
might never hope—nor wish—to attain to. Yet Emily 
Morris gave him not a chair but let him stand, which he 
did not seem to mind, while she sat down beside Collson 
and Eldred and Pete. The subject turned on the latter, 
Eldred saying aside to the lampman : 

“I notice he’s not perfumed tonight.” 

Rummel, not hearing the name mistook the meaning. 
He turned pale, then scarlet, but with quick control of 
his emotions went on with what he was saying to Miss 
Wilkes regarding a play they had attended. Uncle Coll¬ 
son stroked one of the long ears rubbing his knee. 

“No,” said he, “he’s got over that but he still won’t do 
as I tells him. I locked the door that night of the hall 
doin’s an’ warned him sollem as he must stay in wi’ 
Nellie.” 

“He didn’t?” 

Collson looked down into the big eyes unwinkingly 


3 ^ 


In The Carbon Hills 


looking up into his own. “Not he; an’ he knowed as he 
didn’t intend to when I left neither, for a few minutes 
after I got in he was there, too.” 

“Got through the keyhole?” the foreman laughed 
gently, and Emily Morris, who was talking with Mary 
MacDonald, yet listening to her son, admonished gently: 
“Now-Eldred.” 

“'The kayhole?’” Collson was quite seriously sur¬ 
prised. “Not he; but he came through them winder- 
stoppin’s at the back by pullin’ ’em out. I shouldn’t 
wonder if he learns to shift putty if I puts panes in in¬ 
stead of my pit-pants. He’s a wise dog, that un.” 

“You’re a smart old dog, Peter: a pretty wise old 
hound,” Eldred stroked the head lifted up to him as he 
got up at the sound of the fiddle. 

“He’s a skunk-huntin’-ragskallamufifin, that’s what he 
is,” the old miner embellished the foreman’s description, 
as the lampman hobbled over to the other side of the 
room where he and Pete would be out of the way. And 
this he repeated again in a slightly more bitter tone as 
he looked hard at the youth speaking jovially but quietly 
to Miss Wilkes, and, probably, unintentionally ignoring 
their greeting bows. 

The lower rooms were full of grown-ups, mostly 
American and British. The beds upstairs had quite a 
full quota of firstborns of both sexes. Outside a small 
crowd of the same nationalities gathered. Calabrue’s 
men rarely took active interest in the pleasures of their 
English-speaking contemporaries, although one of them 
had drifted in that night from the big red boarding-house 
in the fields beyond The Bffie. These sons of Italy had 
their own frolics, Saint Days and “Big Sundays.” Even 
in Carbonia the lines of caste are strictly drawn, some¬ 
times. 

The fiddles tuned up. Eldred Morris’s place alone 
wasn’t filled. Even as the dancers waited so had a man 



In The Carbon Hills 


3 7 

dark-visaged and earnest who had watched for the fore¬ 
man's exit for an hour. 

“ ‘A place?' ” the young man repeated soothingly as to 
a child; “a new place, Toni, tonight—no . . . This 

isn’t the place to ask for a new room, you chump,” and 
brushing past him in answer to someone in the doorway 
calling him Eldred Morris turned to add: “To-morrow; 
yes, I’ll see you to-morrow, or someone else will,” he 
finished under his breath, and wondering at the man’s in¬ 
tensity obvious in every word and gesture, and at the 
wild stare attributed at first to liquor. 

Later that wonder grew, mingled not a little with ap¬ 
prehension regarding the Italian’s design. For each time 
Eldred Morris's form passed the doorway that night, 
until the last hour or so before the foreman was called 
to the mine, Pietrecco followed him but did not speak. 
Alleviation came only in the fact that since he had taken 
active charge of the big mine surprises were becoming 
commonplace: the unexpected the rule. Thus the night 
went on and the dance, while a man with bowed head 
wandered, strangely agitated, along that path which goes 
past The Effie to Calabrue’s, and no other unpleasant in¬ 
cident occurred. 

So that what between eating and drinking and dancing 
the collars of the gentlemen generally did not crumple, 
for there were but two there containing starch, but the 
ladies’ waists did begin to go askew near the belt-line in 
that direction taken when one “Swings yer Pardner!” 
The young women and young men were quite evenly 
apportioned, and the dance not being public each danced 
with each in turn. The second time Eldred Morris joined 
hands “to cirkirlate” with Miss Wilkes to the tune of 
“Oh Dear Mamma What A Cold I’ve Got,’’ what with the 
near touch of her soft flesh, the thrill of his arm around 
her waist, her heaving bosom so near his own filling his 
nostrils with the fragrance of several flowers upon her 


38 


In The Carbon Hills 


breast and a single rose in her hair, he forgot all his 
pique. They grew quite confidentially familiar, and he 
suggested at the end that they go out. 

So they went out, and he put his hand over hers shyly 
as they went upward toward a knoll, and she allowed it 
to remain thus. Then it stole round her waist and she 
made no resistance. The voices and the lights were 
near. Moreover she was not afraid of him—not in the 
least. They stopped, and he said tentatively: 

“You’re going home tonight?” 

She murmured affirmatively. 

“With me?” he persisted, having gained confidence this 
night while he had held her close to himself and his 
breath stirred the loose strands of hair on her white 
neck. 

“I might,” she replied. Then, following a moment’s 
thought: “Yes, I suppose.” 

He still clung to the way of the village sweethearts. 
“To take home” meant an hour or two in the parlor— 
alone with HER. And his voice was vibrant with cha¬ 
grin when he told her his desire. Anticipation and the 
touch of her body soft and sweet and clean enwrapping 
him with its own odor made him foolish. Calling a 
curse on his ill-luck he explained after apology. 

“When it isn’t you or Rummel it's the mine,” he said, 
already grieved at his outburst. “I’ve got to go—right 
now—and you’ll dance again with-.” 

“Tom, or MacDonald, or Margaret’s beau—Farley, 
isn’t it?” she reassured him with words and laughter and 
made him glad. Through the dark she looked at him 
questioningly, and he understood and explained: 

“Turley is at the mine; has been all evening in my 
place.” Turley had been young himself; also he liked 
his subordinate and had a secret aspiration to one day 
call him nephew as Elizabeth’s husband. “He sent this,” 
striking a match for her eyes to see, “before the last 



In The Carbon Hills 


39 


dance.” A gust of wind blew the paper away. 

‘‘And still you waited?” They had turned at the top 
of the hill and walked slowly toward the house. 

“I’d have taken a discharge and went to work with the 
men again,” he told her earnestly, “rather than miss that 
dance,” which gratified something in Elizabeth Wilkes 
perhaps you, fair reader, can explain, because she had 
never heard Eldred Morris say anything with worse 
grammar since he had been trying to master it as well 
as mining, nor with the same deliberation he had said 
that unless he meant it with all his heart. Also it led her 
womanly intuition to anticipate what did in fact material¬ 
ize a moment later, and which she wanted and did not 
want to hear. He tried to kiss her, but she moved quickly 
from him, trembling, fearing herself more than him, won¬ 
dering why the nettles she had deliberately planted 
bloomed as roses having the full fragrance of love. 

“Eldred,” she urged, “the folks will miss us; let us go. 
And the mine?” 

“The folks will wait,” he retorted, wondering in him¬ 
self how before a dance, the dance, after the dance, 
could make so vast a difference in liberties granted and 
taken. He wondered why a man could do that during 
the exaltation sequent on motion and music which in 
Carbonia at other times might mean death, or at least a 
thrashing. He wondered when he saw her avoid him 
when he attempted to put forth his hand to embrace her 
body why she had allowed the same thing in public, and, 
at that moment to Eldred Morris the conventions seemed 
a weak excuse. It flashed across his mind that it seemed 
incongruous for John Smith to encircle Mrs. Brown’s 
waist one night, and hold her as close to him as Brown 
himself would do—the closer the better—and yet for 
poor John to “get his block knocked off” (if nothing 
worse happened) for doing the same thing the next day. 
And substituting the armorous John Smith for Eldred 


40 


In The Carbon Hills 


Morris, and Mrs. Brown for Elizabeth Wilkes, how was 
a man to tell under such fluctuating conditions when his 
love was reciprocated and when it was not? When the 
love of a man’s soul allows other gentlemen such as 
Amos Rummel and Donald MacDonald—being the danc¬ 
ing extremities of married and single life in this case— 
to do with her waist as John Smith did to Mrs. Brown’s 
while he sat talking with Emily Morris and Esther, how 
was he to know unless he asked? 

“The folks will wait, and the mine will keep,” he re¬ 
torted truculently; “what I have to say won’t.” He bit 
the end off sharply as he would a cigar that proved ob¬ 
durate to his teeth, and she feathered the rough edges he 
had torn in the atmosphere by rippling laughter. 

“Yes it will, you silly boy,” again stepping away from 
him when he attempted to draw her to him. “I’ll—I’ll 
put salt on it,” her voice echoing its silvery peals in the 
copse beside the path. 

Eldred Morris of the mine wasn’t the same gentleman 
Elizabeth Wilkes was here leading a beggar’s dance, and 
we may assume that his own voice sounded foreign to 
him when he said that she might do whatever she liked, 
or say she didn’t care for him, but he knew better. 

“But I shan’t say that,” she promptly responded in 
asurance, “as I’m the teacher of boys and girls in the 
Episcopalian Sunday School, and it wouldn’t be a good 
example if my scholars knew I had told a lie . . . now 
would it?” 

“Then you do love me, Elizabeth?” his voice insistent: 
hers tormenting. 

“I didn’t say that.” 

“Well, do,” he persisted, and she told him again she 
was a teacher of children and must be careful of her 
words. “You wouldn’t want me to please you with a 
fib, Mr. Morris?” she assumed a mock frigidity. “Not 
tonight anyway. I might have to dance with Mr. Rum- 


In The Carbon Hills 


4i 


mel when MacDonald can’t get someone to take his 
place with the fiddle, or perhaps go home with one of 
them . . . You wouldn’t want a girl who loved you 

to do that?” 

“If it couldn’t be helped,” he agreed, willing to go 
half way. 

“But it could,” she continued to quibble and torment. 
“I could stay with your mother or Mrs. MacDonald or 
Esther.” 

“Well do that,” he urged, taking her seriously, “and 
tell me do you—do you—what about Rummel? Don’t 
you know, Elizabeth, that he is-.” 

His companion cut him short. “Mr. Morris,” she said, 
“that isn’t fair; because I’ve locked the front door you are 
trying to get in at the back. I’ve half a mind to say 
sneak in. I thought you were—were better than that.” 

She walked farther away from him; he begged her 
pardon and adroitly put the same question another way. 

“Well, what of me, then? This thing can’t go on this 
way. I’ve a home, and-.” 

“Why not?” she interrupted, now in an earnest mood 
herself. “I’m sure I haven’t shown any sign that it’s 
disagreeable to me—not tonight, anyhow,” she modified, 
the dark hiding the surge of color to her cheeks and neck. 
“I do like to have you with me—sometimes—and care 
for you and your interests a great deal, Eldred. But 
why do you urge anything more? We are both young 
and you are getting along so well at the mine, and I 
have a long time to go to school yet, besides—there are 
other matters you don’t understand . . . Mr. Rum- 

mel’s-.” 

“Why?” he stopped her harshly; “why? You let me 
go with you long enough to set the grass on fire then you 
ask why it burns?” 

“Well I’m sorry,” she laughed gently at his way of put¬ 
ting it, “and salt won’t be of any—I mean I’ll have to 





42 


In The Carbon Hills 


put water on it if—oh! if you persist in—oh, Mr. Morris, 
let us go nearer the house, please do,” Elizabeth stam¬ 
mered, pleaded, moving near enough to him to clutch 
desperately at his arm, and listening to the sound of 
heavy footfalls coming toward her in the dark. 

It came very near and suddenly coughed a hoarse, rank, 
horribly loud cough, and the girl snuggled close to the 
man in sheer fright. Taking advantage he caught and 
held her despite her struggles, his hand near her heaving 
breast and agitated heart, and the little zephyrs of her 
warm breath fanned his face as he kissed her, “setting 
the grass on fire” in earnest. Then he laughingly told 
her the awful noise nearby was only one of her papa’s 
sick mules up to get well with a change of air and food. 

Then she was vexed indeed, and placed a greater dis¬ 
tance between him and herself than formerly. 

As they neared the house she spoke of the accident, 
for she was withal a Wilkes. “It mightn’t be much,” he 
said, “but it’s in a bad place: the fan. It’ll fill a good 
many free places with gas if it stands long.” 

“Then I must wish you good night,” she urged, which 
he postponed by saying he almost wished—just then— 
he wasn’t bossing, wistfully looking at the fair face now 
visible in the light. “It’s harder work than is generally 
supposed—mentally and otherwise—and a man can never 
call a minute his own. It’s a good bit of a buffer’s job, 
too, for if a man does his duty to his employer the men’s 
enmity is his for a certainty; if he pleases the operator 
last and the men first he has to go. If a man-.” 

“Oh, Mr. Morris,” Elizabeth Wilkes pleaded in inter¬ 
rupting, “don’t say that. I’m sure papa is—that is if— 
if you—if I dared repeat what papa and Uncle Turley 
say,” she stammered, “you would think differently; you’d 
know your efforts were appreciated indeed.” 

“Well I’m glad of that,” Morris exclaimed without ef¬ 
fort to disguise the fact that the girl’s suggestion had 



In The Carbon Hills 


43 


filled an emptiness. “I guess I’m not different from the 
majority of men in that I’m glad to know that my best 
efforts to do the square thing by both parties are recipro¬ 
cated. And like me they’d hardly know if someone didn't 
tell ’em. Anyhow I shall have more heart in my work 
for awhile,” he told her, then, bending close to her ear 
he whispered: 

“But there’s another thing that would-.” 

With her hand pressed against his lips Elizabeth 
crushed back what he would have said. “Not tonight,” 
she told him soothingly. “Tomorrow, if the mine works 
I’ll let you say it,” and turned at the sound of a footstep 
to find Mary MacDonald beside her. She called: 

“Where’s that Eldred Morris?” looking into the dark 
where Eldred stood, her eyes still blinded by the recent 
light. 

“Here, playing hooky, Mary,” he laughed. 

“Your father asked me to come out an’ find you. Mr. 
Turley’s sent twice for you,” she said, “and the last time 
for Donald and Strafford as well. He had all the day men 
out of the blocks before.” 

By this time all the red was gone from the foreman’s 
face. The accident must have been more serious than he 
thought. He was restlessly eager now, and spoke to no 
one while he stripped and hurriedly donned some of 
John Morris’s working clothes. He had scarcely finished 
when the noise of dancing feet was smothered by the 
sound of the big mine-whistle. 

Before he had gone far it started again, breaking the 
heavy stillness lying over the unpeopled fields with a 
roar that spoke words of portent to the hurrying man. 
Then again it blew, and still again, and, having sent its 
message blew no more. 

******** 

Toward dawn it became evident to Eldred Morris that 
if the mine was to run that day more help must be pro- 



44 


In The Carbon Hills 


cured. Most of the men working were tired out. The 
nearest available were at Calabrue’s, and the most willing, 
too, for heavy labor. Standing still the great blades 
would leave the workings in an ultra-sensitive and 
dangerous state. Nor would it be for that day alone. 
Inflamable gas would rise into many places Morris had, 
by almost super-human effort since he had been fore¬ 
man, freed of its dangerous prescence. Insidiously it 
would creep out of gaseous rooms and headings and 
snuggle up in open areas made by acres of fallen strata. 
Almost every rib-cave in the mine would be full of it, 
particularly in that section over which Strafford was 
fireboss. 

To avoid this danger Morris spared neither himself 
nor his men. Like a bull he bellowed commands through 
the dinning noise to the men flagging in the distance, yet 
smoothly and quietly insistent when he could be heard 
so. With unseemly haste lights flickered above the ver¬ 
tical chasm, yet progress was slow, tormentingly so to 
that man of all there who fully realized its significance. 
An accident purposed or lacking intent at that time 
might mean much more to Wilkes and his family than 
a small fire sometime before, even if confined to one 
section. At four in the morning Eldred spoke to one of 
the men: 

“Go to Calabrue’s,” said he, “for Toni Pietrecco, Big 
Dominic (so called because of extreme shortness) and 
Rossi, and tell Calabrue to send their buckets on later. 
They’re the nearest and the most apt to come,” he ad¬ 
ded aside to MacDonald. 

The man nodded and swung into a path crossing the 
field in which the fan-shaft had been sunk. At one end 
of that particular ribbon of ungrassed soil was The Effie's 
hoisting shaft, at the other a square barn-like structure 
painted red but looking black in the gray dawn. Toward 
this building the miner was heading. 


CHAPTER VI. 


AN UNDERGROUND DRAMA 
Act One: The Crime 

When Foreman Morris sent to Calabrue’s boarding 
house not all of Calabrue’s lodgers were asleep. Ac¬ 
cording to the ethics of slumber in the mining camp they 
should have been, just then, to a man so soundly slum¬ 
bering that nothing short of a stick of dynamite exploded 
beneath each bunk would have awakened its occupant. 
One of them at least had passed a restless night rolling 
and tossing on his hard bed, occasionally groaning as a 
man in physical pain. 

During the night the uneasy sleeper’s subconscious 
misery had distressed his bed-butty, for at Calabrue’s the 
beds, even as their occupants, frequently carried double 
burden until they knew better. Yet strange as it may 
seem it was not only the mine foreman’s refusal to place 
this burden on Antonio Pietrecco at Emmy Morris’s 
party that was responsible for the miner’s unrest. Many 
other links had been forged, and more subtle the blows, 
previous to the dance in the new house. 

Pietrecco had for sometime been a lodger at Calabrue’s 
before his mental state became unduly agitated. With 
the knowledge that certain of his countrymen had found 
at the foot of The Effie’s rainbow the pot of gold he craved 
came pain, as it so often does. The previous quiescency 
can best be explained, perhaps, by adducing the fact that 
Pietrecco was a good Catholic as our miners go. It was 
through his frequenting the little Colville church with the 

45 


46 


In The Carbon Hills 


Cross, more than that other institution of our vicinity 
the sign of which was tin and a frothy beer mug depict¬ 
ed in uncertain art, that Antonio had not hitherto caught 
the drift of the undercurrent which eventually proved his 
undoing. Purposely this topic was discussed chiefly at 
Maloney’s, and rarely before the bar even there. 

At Calabrue’s table who had a good place in the mine, 
whose wife and bambinos had left Italy and would ar¬ 
rive in Carbonia soon, who was returning to his native 
hills to toil no more in The Land Of Opportunity, all 
these were discussed freely and openly and were to 
Pietrecco as the Prayer To His Patron Saint, or the order 
of service specified in The Missal. He could speak up 
with any of them, and on most subjects out-argue even 
Rossi The Loud-Mouthed, despite his raucous voice and 
foul language, and could talk and gesture one of the 
several Dominies, nick-named The Squeaker, to a stand¬ 
still in ten minutes. The idiosyncrasies of mining no¬ 
menclature sometimes—as in these two cases—struck a 
line analogous with characteristics. Calabrue’s boarders 
bore names of such mystifying similarity that Carbonia 
untangled to suit its own contrariant humors. 

But of late Pietrecco had caught a suggestion fleeting 
as the Summer wind, and toward which his attitude caa 
best be described as that of a babe to The Law. By and 
by other signs became manifest, one of the chiefest a 
decided increase in his little cousin’s pay, while Antonio’s 
was at a standstill, or worse. For the foreman, when he 
had by clever manipulation of the resources placed at his 
command opened for occupancy a great many places, had 
too tender a spirit to resist the clamorous, long-idle, men 
who came at that period of industrial depression from 
God-knows-where. Also the superintendent, possibly at 
the instigation of Wilkes, had ordered that married men 
particularly should be favored. The foreman, as well as 
the miner, is an employee, and must carry on his own 


In The Carbon Hills 


47 


shoulders and heavy in his own heart, quite often, in¬ 
justice not his own. The “company store” fathered many 
a wrong in our village in those days. 

For months Pietrecco had barely made his board let 
alone enable him to remit to his loved ones in the distant 
land. Clamorous letters therefrom, and the astonishing 
difference in Dominic’s pay, had driven the miner to 
desperation bordering on insanity. And so matters stood 
when one morning at Calabrue’s table the news was dis¬ 
seminated that “Big” Dominic’s family was due to reach 
Colville that day. The news turned Toni an ashen gray 
with impotent rage and superstition. He had heard of 
men becoming desperate enough to sell themselves to a 
certain cloven-hoofed gentleman for a consideration in 
coin. Could it be that ... At this point Toni’s self¬ 
interrogation ended abruptly. Some things were appar¬ 
ently too fearsome to be given thought. He crossed him¬ 
self vigorously, and barely spoke to Dominic as he passed 
him that morning. 

During that day, however, the element of superstition 
was removed with the possibility of Dominic’s family 
reaching the village for sometime. Arrival at Carbonia 
was delayed. The latter came as news from the steam¬ 
ship agent, the former from a miner who, besides being 
a countryman of Pietrecco’s, had in better times worked 
in that part of the mine where Dominic and several oth¬ 
ers had found the rainbow’s foot. He explained to Toni 
how the need of that part going forward as fast as pos¬ 
sible gave to those employed there many cars while oth¬ 
er sections had few. Also incidentally came a hint from 
Calabrue, but the latter, having never been a miner, could 
give but a generic idea. But these several openings gave 
to Pietrecco the clue to further operations looking to¬ 
ward ultimate success. His first move had failed the 
night of Emmy Morris’s party, preceding which Dom¬ 
inic’s heart leaped and his tongue wagged at the station 


4 8 


In The Carbon Hills 


when his tongue was not outdone by the woman’s beside 
him. 

On the way to the village he told her of extensive 
preparations made for her coming, and that he had ’’in¬ 
vited Rossi and Calabrue and Pietrecco and- 

The dusky matron interrupted: “‘Pietrecco,’ my 
sister’s husband?” 

“The same,” answered her spouse, touching which in¬ 
formation an embarrassing silence fell between the two 
for the space of ten seconds. This gave Dominic the op¬ 
portunity to petulantly order the troop of miniature re¬ 
plicas of himself and his Maria to keep closer to his heels 
and to cease gaping at each house in turn. 

“Yours is so—alike as two grapes—four rooms, yes,” 

he replied to a question from his wife, “and painted 
>> 

• • • 

Followed another pause in which the woman’s eyes 
traversed the bent the younger members of the family 
had been forbidden. In spasmodic jerks she remarked 
many things strange to her, among them a nickle-trim- 
med range seen through an open door, and her face 
beamed at her lord’s reply: 

“A stove-” proudly, “but new my Maria: shiny 

like silver. Mucha cost? Yes, twenty-five dollar: one 
hundred twenty-five lira!” Dominic spoke in their native 
tongue, interspersed freely with mongrel English to im¬ 
press his mate. The woman was pleased—surprised. 
Her man was rich—assuredly so, and clever! How did he 
speak that strange language? America had done wonders 
for her Dominic, and-. 

“Pietrecco?” his wife turned with an odd look 
her husband did not relish. “His family is still at Cal- 
vara-on-the-hill and you—you came together . . . ” 

Dominic was more ingenious in invention than in¬ 
genuous in language. He found refuge in evasion. 





In The Carbon Hills 


49 


‘‘Antonio not good worker in this—the safety light— 
it hurt his eyes—it bad.” 

Not fully understanding such strange terms the woman 
looked her doubt. She had known Pietrecco as a good 
workman, strong, industrious, a churchman: having ev- 
ery good qualification her Dominic had not. Could it be 
the seacrossing had made—but, being a woman she was 
poor at accepting theories. To her practical mind, as is 
common to her people and class, the way to judge of a 
thing was by its results, and she balanced her husband's 
case on this scale. She found the net result concrete and 
to her pleasing: decidedly so. Toni and the distant sister 
were swallowed in the first exultation of the new home, 
and if she thought of the matter again occasionally it 
was to pity her sister’s choice and grow prouder of her 
own acumen. Maria lent her every energy to the pre¬ 
paration attendant on the big time which was to inaug¬ 
urate the family’s coming into the new land of glorious 
opportunity! 

******** 

Of all who came Pietrecco alone showed outward envy 
of the family’s coming. His wife had sent trivial tokens 
of love to him by the hands of her sister, which added to 
the miner’s anguish. He drank his beer sullenly, refusing 
obdurately to mix with it the plenteous wine. He ate 
chestnuts previously boiled, and helped out the repast 
with large quantities of chicken cooked in olive oil. He 
grunted a few words of welcome and asked many ques¬ 
tions regarding the wife and children in the far-away 
village. And while the crowd talked itself hoarse and 
drank itself maudlin Pietrecco shrewdly listened and re¬ 
mained sober. He had heard somewhere that a drunken 
tongue quite often lays bare a sober thought. It did. 

Insofar as Pietrecco was concerned the boiled chest¬ 
nuts and beer served so liberally at Dominic’s had little 
to do with the restless night that followed. At the 


50 


In The Carbon Hills 


moment Morris started the man toward Calabrue’s for 
help Antonio was bending beside his trunk. Quietly 
opening it he extracted therefrom all he had been able to 
save toward doing what Dominic had done. And, hold¬ 
ing it near the light, he looked at it long, and an un¬ 
utterable feeling almost choked him. 

“Perhaps after all,” he hesitated, “the boss might not be 
—or the drink? Dominic’s a boaster anyway . . . 

perhaps- 

Here Toni got confused in his hypothesis. A step 
sounded along the rough aisle dividing the bedrooms on 
one side from those on the other, and he abstractedly 
put the money back. Then he listened. It was only 
Calabrue’s “woman” going down to get breakfast. Then 
came the voice at the stair-foot: 

“Rossi! Pietrecco ! Bigga Domineek !” 

Going down they told the messenger: “Dominic’s at 
his own house but he come—sure.” 

The messenger went for Dominic, while Calabrue’s 
“woman” told the others: “Morris sends for you to the 
shaft—quick.” 

They slipped into their working clothes and went out 
into the dawn, with Pietrecco’s savings in his pocket. 

The mine did not run generally that day. An im¬ 
portant piece of machinery broke and necessitated a 
duplicate being forged at the shop. But at the earliest 
moment fresh air went sweeping through Strafford’s sec¬ 
tion. MacDonald and Rossi had both gone home suffer¬ 
ing minor injuries received during the work, and Straf¬ 
ford had gone in to examine for gas preparatory for the 
entrymen to follow and get coal ready. These “free 
turn” men followed the fireboss at a safe distance, among 
them Dominic, although he had worked since dawn. 
Times were hard and a good place not readily to be 
forfeited. 

“I’ll go to the office for an anemometer and Davy, 




In The Carbon Hills 


5i 


now, I guess/’ Morris told Turley, “and slip over for 
my own clothes and a snack while I’m at it,” by which 
the reader will assume that Eldred Morris didn’t tell all 
his desires even to the girl’s uncle, no more than you did 
to yours. “I want to look at some work in the old sec¬ 
tion before we start again.” Then, to Pietrecco: “You 
pretty handy with a saw, Toni?” 

Antonio nodded and smiled effusively. The early morn¬ 
ing’s work had in his simple estimation placed him in 
considerable familiarity with the foreman. Hands and 
bodies together they had lifted and strained and—cursed. 

“Well, get a saw and hatchet and some nails from the 
shop and wait at the shaft until I come back. I’ve a bit of 
work in yonder that you can do to make a shift.” 

When Morris ultimately returned to the mine the sun 
stood well over the hills beyond Colville, flooding the 
intervening valley with light. In the clumps of trees be¬ 
yond the car tracks birds twittered and sang their morn¬ 
ing hymns to the sun god. Morris munched the last of a 
piece he had stuffed in his pocket as he passed the en¬ 
gine-rooms, and breathed deep of the vernal fragrance 
strong in the morning even in the mine-yard when the 
wind stood in the right quarter. And his spirits rose 
higher as the sun. 




CHAPTER VII. 


AN UNDERGROUND DRAMA 
Act Two: An Unfortunate Accessory 

The completion of an ugly job whisked away the slight 
ill-temper characterizing the foreman's orders to his men 
during the earlier night. He spoke to Engineer Darrel 
at the shaft-top in a cheerful manner as the latter went to 
his levers to let him down. The cage hit the bottom with 
a thud, water, always collected there, flying out into both 
roadways. Here for a moment foreman and miner stood, 
for a momentary blindness follows the descent from the 
surface light. The safety light approximates total dark¬ 
ness after the sudden transition from the sun. Then, 
stumbling at first, they went forward with a slow but 
steady swing. The grave-quiet of the underground was 
disturbed only by the sough of their feet and an occas¬ 
ional scurrying of rats who in great numbers fattened 
therein. 

Almost directly underneath the path Pietrecco had 
traversed at dawn from Calabrue’s the eight-foot mine 
road wound its dark way four hundred feet below the 
surface, the two men like ants crawling in their own tun¬ 
nelings. Very infrequently Morris passed back to the 
man following some inconsequential remark to which 
the miner replied almost inaudibly. His mind was con¬ 
cerned with weighty things. 

Thus, mostly in silence, the Calabrian trailed the marks 
left in the exceedingly fine car-powdered coal-dust, fill¬ 
ing in many places the center of the roadway to a depth 

52 


In The Carbon Hills 


53 


of several inches. The district had not yet wet it, so to 
speak, with the tears of widows’ and orphans’ agony. 
Following no general custom such as exists today Morris 
later had this removed from the miles of headings opened 
in The Bffie, deeming it safer where the surface rains and 
snow could fall on it than there, where, in a pulverized, 
deadly, state, an otherwise insignificant gas explosion 
might lift and burn it and destroy or wreck everything 
in its path. 

They came at length to a junction. Morris stopped 
and the miner sank heavily with a sigh to a tool-box kept 
there for the roadmen. Far in the distance to the right 
a number of tiny lights flickered like fireflies viewed from 
the small end of a telescope. Both men remained silent 
while the foreman turned his lamp-flame up slightly, then, 
looking vaguely into the semi-dark above the light’s cir¬ 
cle, he suggested: 

“Toni had too much ‘red-eye’ at Dominic’s last night?” 
attributing the apparent tiredness and silence to the 
wrong cause. Pietrecco nodded, then: 

“Too mucha beer no good—yes,” quickly, “too mucha 
beer good, sometime.” 

This came with a poQr attempt to force a smile. Toni’s 
fingers were touching the paper money in his pocket. 
Bringing it partly out he dropped it back. What if 
Morris should not be, after all, the particular guide for¬ 
tunate Dominic had chosen to conduct him to the pot 
of gold at the carbon rainbow’s base? All the wine had 
not been sufficiently potent to crowd caution sufficient to 
“peach” names. The road only had been incautiously 
made known. And Morris very rarely now exerted his 
privilege of granting places, although his word was the 
more final for its infrequency. Pietrecco knew this, and 
would ever opportunity be better than that before him? 
Pfardly. But if he made a mistake . . . Poor Toni 

shivered. That might mean if not discharge at least the 


54 


In The Carbon Hills 


contempt of the best of The Effie's officials from the 
miners’ point of view. Eldred had been “a gooda boy— 
kinda boy—smila atta me, sometime,” and, unlike Straf¬ 
ford, would not call him bad names when he did not 
understand. 

Morris went inward toward the visible lights. The 
noise of labor was faintly audible. He stopped at an 
opening on the left and went in, removing a board which 
stood at the entrance. The coal vein here was high, 
which meant money to the miner if cars were available, 
the floor was dry, which meant comfort either way. Dog¬ 
like, Pietrecco still followed, but remained at a respectful 
distance when ordered, his eyes measuring with desire 
the natural excellencies of the place. 

When Morris returned he replaced the board which 
had written on it in large letters: DANGER: KEEP 
OUT. This meant the miners. They retraced their 
steps to the junction, and Toni’s heart sank as he passed 
on, still undecided, into the blackness. They came to 
the section where he worked. The pot of gold lay where 
they had recently left. Alternately hoping and fearing 
Pietrecco came almost without another word having 
passed between him and his superior to another point 
from which the two roads diverged, and having a pro¬ 
jecting point like a letter V. Here again they stopped, 
and, setting his safety-light on a miner’s tool-box nest¬ 
ling against the black side, Morris held in the heading’s 
center the anemometer. 

The miner’s eyes watched the rapidly whirling blades 
of the little instrument, but there was in them no wonder 
anent the mysterious click of the watch-like movement. 
He waited patiently for it to end while in the silence the 
foreman made memorandum of the place “taken” and 
the quantity of cubic feet of air passing. Then Antonio 
touched respectfully the box on which The Great One 


In The Carbon Hills 


55 

had seated himself, the pallor of his face not showing in 
the dark shadows. 

“This my tools—my box—Meester Morris,” he start¬ 
ed, and stopped, undecided still. 

The foreman looked at him with a blank stare. He was 
thinking of something far removed from the tools of 
Pietrecco, and the fact that they stood at that particular 
corner at that particular time was of small moment. The 
official's thoughts had shifted to the lover’s with the 
speed of lightning: from barometers, anemometers and 
the water-gauge to a path fringed with hazel bushes and 
a rising knoll: from a young man’s having more or less 
control of many not particular men to the same gentle¬ 
man desiring control over one particular young woman. 
Forsooth The Underground carried waves of thought 
more interesting and vital than poor Pietrecco’s tools. 
The miner tried again. 

“My place fineeshed, Meester Morris,” his head bowing 
not because of its nearness to the roof, which was at this 
point several feet above a standing man’s head, and hav¬ 
ing great beams stretching from side to side. 

Morris looked at him, a quizzical smile playing round 
his lips. He knew the symptoms of asking a favor, 
although like a medical diagnosis they varied according 
to circumstances and man. He had a semblance of an 
idea Pietrecco was suffering from these symptoms: he 
had no idea of the miner’s intention of a cure. It had 
been one of the young foreman’s pet ideals this inno¬ 
cence of graft, petty or grand. It was one of Eldred 
Morris’s most ardent desires to run this first mine, as 
well as all that might follow it, honestly as he could: 
to give each man in his turn the best circumstances 
allowed. He had too much to do to attend to every 
case, and as was then the custom—and is now, perhaps,—• 
deputed this to men below him in the official scale whom 
he believed as conscientious and honest as himself. He 


56 


In The Carbon Hills 


believed every man such until proved otherwise. He ex¬ 
pected only men of proven experience would under any 
circumstances be put in dangerous places—that is those 
where gas existed. All places in the underground are 
“dangerous’’ when it comes to generic designation. That 
this rule of safety-first was being violated for a consider¬ 
ation he did not know, and, woe to the man thus favored 
who might let him know. Some way would be found to 
deal with him, as with the agitator even at those mines 
where The Union is supposedly paramount. This “way” 
took diametrically opposite courses sometimes, and, I 
regret to say, a chronic agitator has been known ere this 
to be inveigled by the “free turn” siren he condemned, 
and henceforth the union lost a spouter and the mine 
gained a Judas. 

Unfortunately for Pietrecco he began at the very worst 
place in a series of treacherous points, and proceeded to 
make bad matters worse. He said again: 

“My place fineeshed—you givva me gooda place—we 
passa him, that place,” smirking in that syncophantic way 
way the poor fellows believe aids in a laudable desire to 
keep friendly with their superiors in toil. 

“What entry you from, Toni; your number;” the fore¬ 
man rose to go forward, his voice still evidencing a friend¬ 
liness toward Pietrecco’s purpose, so the miner thought, 
and nodded, smiled, still more obsequiously. The fore¬ 
man naturally likes the man who fails him not in a crisis. 

Pietrecco forgot to answer; his fingers itched in his 
pocket; his brain almost burst with the suddenness of 
two desires. Morris put it plainer—for Toni. 

“What number: your check?” his voice wheedling, 
high, in that combination we use to invoke a foreigner’s 
reluctant phraseology or a deaf man’s reply. 

Pietrecco took from his pocket some round brass 
checks, and passed one to the foreman. 

“This is your section,” the latter replied ominously it 


In The Carbon Hills 


57 


seemed to the miner, and took from his pocket a number 
of papers. On these smutty leaves the fireboss had mark¬ 
ed “places vacant” and “places working,” the reason for 
the former and an approximate estimate of the cost of 
setting them right. Others were accompanied by the 
suggestive word: “Gas.” Some had heavy falls of strata 
to be cleaned up; some were faulty because Nature in 
her vagaries had placed clay-veins where she might have 
placed coal, and yet again depressed the thickness of the 
seam and increased the death-dealing slate above it. 
Many of these Pietrecco knew quite well, having in the 
preceding days gone about with an eye single to the pos¬ 
sible betterment of his condition when he should have 
found The Inner Wheel. Each day found some of the 
vacant ones taken, others which had been in operation 
stopped. With all these changes Antonio had kept in 
touch. 

“This place or that you can have,” said Morris at 
length, pointing to a number and then another. 

Toni shook his head. His conception of the numbers 
was a vivid as the foreman’s; the scrawl was as Chinese. 
He mentioned the place they had left by number, and a 
sharp change came to the other. “No,” he said emphat¬ 
ically, then, softened a little: “Too dangerous—for you 
—yet awhile, Toni.” He slipped the sheaf of papers into 
his pocket, standing with his characteristic patience. Be¬ 
side the men sulphuric water rippled merrily toward the 
great pulsing Camerons at the shaft, for the section they 
were in was as wet as other parts of the mine were ex¬ 
cessively dry. 

“I lika one deeferent,” Pietrecco stubbornly insisted, 
finger pressing the note in his pocket, fearing mistake 
in the man, fearing to withhold lest man, place and time 
be propitious. He knew his desire; no certain way to 
accomplish it. “My cuuson—Bigga Dominic,” he again 
persisted to the easy wonder of the foreman. Morris re- 


58 


In The Carbon Hills 


marked his trembling voice, the unusual agitation in his 
gesture. Undoubtedly even an Italian stomach wasn't 
proof against boiled chestnuts and wine. “I lika same 

place; you givva me I-” the bills crushed in the 

calloused palm. 

“Full up, Toni, except the one place we were in and 
that's dangerous I told you—for you," came with settled 
finality. Even the foreman’s patience had a limit. 

Pietrecco started again: “But, Meester Boss,” feebly 
attempting to conciliate, to soothe and possibly change 
the verdict of the supreme judge of The Underground, 
and his effort was nipped by the chilly frost of Authority. 

“There’s no buts about it! Come on till I show you the 
place and the work I want done,” Eldred Morris swung 
into the darkness, slightly arrogant, erect, firm in the 
knowledge that therein he was king. They came to the 
places encompassing Pietrecco’s choice. This way led 
directly toward an opening recently made out of the mine 
into a narrow valley. It was low, wet, altogether un¬ 
lovely even from the miner’s unaesthetic perception. 
The latter gesticulated wildly: 

“No gooda place—no mon, never my fam’ly he come 
from Italce,” and adding thereto a diatribe in jumbled 
Italian and English. 

“We’ll call at the other one then,” Morris acquiesced 
not so very impatiently. The mine was idle, and no 
amount of haste would start it that day. Pietrecco took 
this as a good sign. Morris still went ahead, his safety- 
lamp keeping time to his step, flinging its flickering 
shadows forth and back along the black walls. Pietrecco's 
saw and hatchet jangled an unequal sound unsteady as 
his step, and again the tension grew unbearable. He 
stopped, called: “Meester!” and again in his trepidation: 
“Meester Morris!” 

Wondering, the foreman turned suddenly at the voice 
that sounded weird, unnatural, hollow, tremulous, echo- 



In The Carbon Hills 


59 


ing feebly in the abandoned hollows on either side. A 
soft ball was thrust into his hand and he lifted his light 
to examine it. 

Antonio accepted this as preliminary acceptation of 
his design. “It’s allaright—allaright,” he hastened to as¬ 
sure, “Dominic : my cuuson he say- 

But he got no further. Perhaps it was as well the 
poor, deluded toiler, deluded and discriminated against 
as many another of Anglo-Saxon blood with all his native 
pride has been, did not see The Great One’s face as he 
lowered his light and tossed the paper back viciously, and 
with it an exclamation : 

“What in hell do you take me for?” 

The tone of the question was so fierce that Pietrecco 
failed to express his valuation of the foreman in audible 
terms. Like one suddenly stricken with palsy he stood 
there essaying neither speech nor movement. Morris 
helped him to equilibrium: 

“You’ll go into the place we looked at,” he said firmly. 
“Even if it is wet, there’s no gas there.” 

Some of that Antonio understood; some he didn’t, 
which did not matter. He knew enough. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

AN UNDERGROUND DRAMA 
Act Three: The Penalty 

It was about twelve o’clock when Pietrecco laid his 
kit at the place designated by the foreman as “the wet 
one.” It had taken him but an hour to complete the job 
to which Eldred Morris had assigned him, after amending 
his outburst by assuring the miner that he would put in 
a full day’s pay for him no matter how soon he finished 
because of the early morning’s start and other consider¬ 
ations. 

This accomplished the miner wearily retraced his steps 
to the place where the great incident had occurred. 
Morris had gone out of the opening in the valley. He was 
dog-tired and hungry. And while he ate on the surface 
another spent an hour scrutinizing minutely every inch 
of the road where they had stood when the foreman 
spoke so harshly. He found no trace of that he desired. 
Finding it not in a piece he hoped for bits, assuming 
Morris’s temper had caused him to tear it to shreds and 
scatter in the darkness above the lamp’s rays. Neither 
found he the money piece-meal, while beside him mock¬ 
ingly rippled the water that had carried it to the huge 
pumps, but the sound was a dirge to Pietrecco. 

Almost mechanically he started away, drawn by one 
dominant thought to the place he had suggested and been 
denied. The fact of its obvious danger had no signifi¬ 
cance just then in the miner’s mind. At another time the 
sight of the board set carefully at the entrance would 
have deterred him with the same fear of passing as sud- 

60 


In The Carbon Hills 


61 


denly coming upon a rattler along the path from Cala- 
brue’s to The Bffie. 

Having reached there he sat down on the wooden rail. 
His heavy Italian timepiece told him the surface sun was 
past the meridian, but sorrow had killed his appetite for 
food. There came, however, a strong desire to smoke. 
In that part of the mine cigarettes were tabooed by the 
same token matches are generally not ignited in a powder 
magazine. Where Pietrecco sat the air was free of that 
mixture which makes for danger, but beyond great bell¬ 
shaped cavities were undoubtedly full of it. In ordinary 
times he would not have gone near. Neither would he 
have disobeyed The Law by bringing to hand a book of 
Rizla and wrapping therein some savory tobacco. But 
this was no ordinary time for Pietrecco. The frenzy of 
the mind intoxicated by liquor or emotional insanity is 
most dangerous immediately before the narcotic stage is 
reached. The miner was at that stage. 

As the gray smoke rolled upward he reckoned an ap¬ 
proximate time which must elapse ere he regained the 
ground lost that day, and a full round Italian oath es¬ 
caped him. He bethought himself of other mines, but 
there came to him bits of conversation heard from other 
miners at Calabrue’s who had come back to the village 
worse off than they left. The entire district and the 
nation were panic-stricken. Men had emptied their purs¬ 
es of that they had in journeying to find something bet¬ 
ter. And such thoughts as these lessened not the miner's 
pertubation but they did increase the clouds of smoke. 

“I’ve stolen the lamb,” said he, or words to the same 
effect, “and if I hang I’ll have had the sheep.” Therefore 
in utter disregard of consequences he rolled another and 
yet another which in small degree seemed to appease the 
sullen antagonism against all things, including life. He 
threw the last stub into the goaf and settled himself 
against the coal to dream, and, dreaming, transform pas- 


62 


In The Carbon Hills 


sive enmity into active homicide. More so than any¬ 
thing that had passed between him and Morris this state 
of mind was prompted by the miner conjuring a stony 
slope, a rough-built cottage, the dark, smiling faces of 
children: His Own. Then for a moment the ugly mood 
passed and his heavy features lighted with a smile, while 
his eyes sought without purpose the tiny light of his 
safety-lamp. 

“I will write long tonight,” he brushed the tiny brass 
bars standing vertically against the glass circle lovingly, 
in his heart caressing a more tender thing and animate. 
Then suddenly: “But no .... I cannot . . . . 

what can I tell? . . . not that!” Then more softly 

still: “Maria—Antonio—Louy and—and the bambino 

since 1 came—Sophy, perhaps . . .” 

Pietrecco stopped and his lustrously dark eyes filled 
and wet the carbon dust on his blouse. And the names of 
all on earth who were to him most dear echoing back into 
a soul sensitive if ignorant grew into an unutterable de¬ 
sire : a desire men know but two ways to overcome: 
gratification or death. Under its lashing Pietrecco’s 
mind was not his own : his every act the prompting of 
an Invisible Something greater than himself. There 
came to him the sudden, terrible idea of revenge, more 
ruthless of consequence in his race than others, and re¬ 
fined of all counterbalance in the way of slightest reason. 
Sufficient if it would encompass Dominic and the others 
getting coal ready for—torturous thought—more money 
on the morrow than he would make in a week! 

In the distance he could hear them plainly, and through 
a break in the rib the air from the great fan rushed 
strongly toward the lights he had seen. The same haul¬ 
iers drew coal from this place as from Dominic, and he 
had heard that surplus wagons were sometimes of an af¬ 
ternoon distributed, when the more favored places were 
cleaned out of ready coal, as a means of the drivers put¬ 
ting in a full day to the most advantage. Here also he 


In The Carbon Hills 


63 

could keep in closer touch with Dominic, and could get 
him to show wherein the “danger” lay that Morris had 
emphasized as his reason for refusing. 

The homicidal mood had passed and in its stead a de¬ 
termination to investigate things for himself and wait for 
a better time. Italian emotion is decidedly evanescent 
as well as frequently recurrent. There was no difference 
in the air where he now stood and in his own place in 
the other section that he could see. It all looked clear 
and alike. Perhaps it was in some other form farther in. 
But he would first have another smoke. One more could 
not make matters worse, and the matches he had hither¬ 
to struck had burned clearly without danger. Perhaps 
this was merely the American’s polite way of refusing 
the miner a place? But then what of Dominic—Ah! 
who could understand these English words and the men 
who used them ! 

He rose and went inward past the line of working: 
he was already beyond that point which even he knew he 
was not supposed to pass according to The Law of The 
Land and The Law of The Mine. But he went slowly, 
and by instinct cautiously. A narrow passage only partly 
filled with fallen rock left just enough room for ingress. 
The old “face” of the coal would tell him, when he reach¬ 
ed it, the money-making possibilities, better than any¬ 
thing else. Perhaps Strafford might—or Dominic—this 
place might still be his. 

His features were no longer ferocious but had become 
settled in tremulous calm; his heart beat normal. A huge 
skulking rat startled him, then another, both running out¬ 
ward hurriedly as if chased by something unseen. This 
was an unpropitious sign Pietrecco had heard, and he 
moved a little from the roof-broken zone. A small clat¬ 
ter away off in the darkness drew Antonio still further 
from his design. He stopped, looked up, and listened to 
a deep rumble. It passed, and Pietrecco attributed it to 
the possible moving of empty coal cars in the distance 



64 


In The Carbon Hills 


where Dominic and the others worked, or to his own 
nervousness. His cigarette had gone out, and he stood 
undecided for a moment as to returning or continuing on, 
match aflame at the tobacco, his back against the coal- 
rib, when, suddenly, the still lighted match in sheer fear 
was dropped, and his hand clutched the safety-lamp he 
had set on a rock at his feet while he struck it. 

Bending as from a coming blow, Pietrecco started to 
sidle back toward the board with its DANGER lying 
face in the dust, while Cohesion grew every moment 
weaker in its bout with Gravitation. His back continued 
bent, his eyes still peering among the grayish muck of 
the mine floor, so rough when one hastened with such 
feeble light, when the elemental battle ended in a sud¬ 
den fall which forced the marsh-gas downward. There 
came a light, and still greater it grew and sudden, the 
primary symbol of death : the harbinger of woe to our 
village. And behind it all came the slow falling of gray¬ 
ish dust and—silence. 

******** 

With the demise of Strafford and a dozen others An¬ 
tonio Pietrecco brought harm upon others besides him¬ 
self and the miners’ wives who, as was usual at that time, 
were left to take care of themselves. A fund of some 
nine hundred dollars gathered by the miners of the dis¬ 
trict and a local paper published in Colville" 1 decently 
disposed of the dead, but, being spent thus failed to help 
the living to any appreciable extent. 

The commencement of Fall Term at Colville College 
found Miss Sophia Garrul working for Mrs. Rummel in¬ 
stead at the big house above The Bffie, and Miss Wilkes 
washing dishes for Mrs. Wilkes: a case of forsaking 
Virgil for Wedgewood. 


*See COLVILLE WEEKLY NEWS for this period, wherein 
is contained a full description of this explosion and sequent events. 



In The Carbon Hills 


65 


The explosion came between terms, and the fees laid 
aside for the ensuing year enabled Roger Wilkes to do 
much traveling, but it availed not. The mining industry 
was at low ebb and men with money to invest “didn’t 
care to wrap it round matches in a powder mill.” When 
matters were at their very worst, and the steady contract 
seemed on the point of going elsewhere as a permanent 
fixture, much dust was raised between Colville Bank and 
the big house with the frequent passage to and from 
those places of the banker’s gig and Wilkes’s carriage. 
And finally Darrel blew the whistle for work—and ev¬ 
erything and everyone—almost—seemed happy. 

Of all interested the fast-aging Roger alone bore de¬ 
pression written on his face, which was strange indeed 
for a man whose hired Sophy had openly expressed her¬ 
self as better satisfied to work at Wilkes’s for her board 
alone than for board and wages at the banker’s wife’s, 
and had consequently resumed duty at the old stand. 
That Miss Sophia accepted the former weekly stipend as 
well as board at Wilkes’s had nothing whatsoever to do 
with her opinion as expressed at Emily Morris’s and 
Mary MacDonald’s. The facts are as stated, also that 
said Roger’s daughter had resumed her friendship with 
Virgil on the same day the mine resumed with more men 
than it had ever employed before. 

Roger Wilkes had found money aplenty at last—some¬ 
where—to rebuild the wrecked mine. That many others 
as well as he were fated to pay mental as well as pe¬ 
cuniary interest compounded on his borrowings became 
evident when events—but—that must come later. Let 
us to our story by introducing personally to you, gentle 
reader, our ferocious friend, Micky Gawan, the same 
whose blood-lust, according to the story of Bobbie 
Burns MacDonald, prompted the loading of a rifle with 
the sole purpose of putting an end to the career of Pete 
and Little Nellie. 


CHAPTER IX. 


THE LOCAL PRESIDENT 

The occasion was the funeral of a miner from a nearby 
mine who had been crushed with a fall of slate: an oc¬ 
currence so common in the district at that time that it 
scarcely commanded a stick of type in The Colville Weekly 
News nor more than two lines in the Pittsburg dailies. 
His comrades had just then hardly money for bread to 
keep the living let alone undertaker’s fees for the dead. 
The County had buried him. 

‘Tve offen thought,” said Micky Gawan to his slender 
better-half, who weighed 150 pounds more than the little 
stable-boss, “that if I’m alive an’ well when I’m kilt, an’ 
have any say in the matter at all, I should prefer goin’ 
off like Pietrecco an’ them fellers—somethin’ excitin’ like 
yer know.” 

“Yer see, me little darlin’,” Micky turned to the very 
large woman beside him with a look far more solemn 
than his thought created in him, “it’s so much better fer 
the widder is what I’m always thinkin’ on, instid of the 
common way we miners has of gettin’ smashed up with a 
ton or two of rock.” 

Gawan’s nearest approach to the title of miner lay in 
his dispensing the powder and dynamite at Wilkes’s 
magazine, hence, this allusion brought from the Morris’s 
who accompanied him a benign smile and from Mrs. 
Gawan a poke in the ribs and a word of bantering con¬ 
tempt anent a chronic fear of the mine. The former 
tickled him; the latter he ignored. He addressed the 
elder Morris. 


66 


In The Carbon Hills 


67 


“Yer see, Jack, a man can get kilt a half dozen times 
if he’s a mind to in the reg’lar way an’ it don’t make 
enuff fuss to decently bury him.” Then to his wife: 
“So fer that reason, Mrs. Gawan, if I have any say as to 
how you shall be a widder, I’ll let the grass grow long 
an’ dry aroun’ Wilkes’s powder magazine an’ light me 
pipe handy it someday an’ ferget the match.” 

“Mike,” returned John Morris very earnestly, “there’s 
more than funniness in what you say,” which was direct¬ 
ed to the other members of the party rather than Gawan. 
“The public don’t think of us when we get killed one at 
a time; if there’s hundreds they do, but I don’t see as how 
the widder an’ little uns of the man as is killed with slate 
can get on without bread anymore than them as is blown 
up, can you, Emmy?” 

Mrs. Morris, more corpulent than she used to be, nod¬ 
ded ; she was thinking how little the bread left for the 
widows of The Bffic's miniature explosion after the relief 
fund had been distributed among the undertakers. She 
was too breathless to argue the point. 

“The method’s uncertain,” interjected the foreman, 
“and always will be under voluntary contribution,” but 
added, since he doubtless felt the truth of Gawan’s words: 
“Even an up-and-down way is better than nothing at 
such times. It does show that The Public is at heart 
sympathetic, and that this suffering is caused by thought¬ 
lessness and ignorance of real conditions rather than in¬ 
difference, don’t you think so, mother?” 

“I do, my son,” Emily Morris exerted herself to reply 
to the young man’s question. The erstwhile pupil of 
fractions and English was answering his own ethical 
problems nowadays, and rarely bespoke his first and best¬ 
loved teacher’s concurrence. “We Americans are noted 
the world over for alleviating distress, Eldred, and char¬ 
ity begins at home, first, or should do.” 

“Oh, of course, of course,” Micky hastened to assure 


68 


In The Carbon Hills 


the younger man. “I’m not sayin’ as how the collections 
ain’t useful, not at all, fer that’s just what I mean, that 
if a man has to pick a way to pass in his checks it would 
pay him to do it the way as brings in the most money, 
until it’s fixed as one way brings in as much as another. 
You see, Mr. Morris, I've binn brought to them conclus¬ 
ions,” the little man winked slyly past Eldred, “because 
I have to bury such mules as happens with misfortune. 
An’ I got at times to likenin’ ’em with men as cornin’ up 
on the cage in pritty much the same way and-.” 

“More’s to your shame, Mike Gawan,” said the partner 
of his joys and sorrows. 

“I reckon,” Gawan flatly agreed, “but I done it because 
I couldn’t help but think as how this here dead mule 
Barney is worth as much insurance to Wilkes as that 
dead mule Jack as was killed in that little explosion up 
Strafford’s way, because Wilkes insures ’em all alike. 
An’ yet, thinks I, Barney here was shot after bein’ kilt 
with a chunk of rock being so ungentle as to fall on him, 
while Jack was wise enuff to go off more sudden. But 
men, thinks I, as should surely be worth as much as a 
mule, ain't worth nothin’.” 

“Because Wilkes don’t have to replace them nor keep 
the families, an' The Public as does hasn't got around to 
it yet but they will,” John Morris said slowly, nodding 
“Good Day” to Collson sitting beneath the big pine in 
his yard, and, after shooing Pete from Mrs. Morris’s 
dress, enquired after the “rheumatticks” that had kept 
the old lampman at home that day, “yes, Micky, it won’t 
be long until men’ll be worth more even to the company 
than mules.” 

“But as long as they ain’t, Mr. Morris,” the slender 
lady accompanying the little stableman bawled breath¬ 
lessly over her shoulder as the pair parted from Morris’s 
and started unequally toward the row where they lived, 
“I think I’d better trade Gawan off for a pair of mules, 



In The Carbon Hills 69 

don’t you think?” and the way the little man looked at 
her one would have thought she meant it. 

The Morris home was nearer, and while the men set¬ 
tled themselves on the porch Mrs. Morris went in to 
dispose of oppressive clothing. Eldred seated himself 
comfortably in a large wicker rocker, tilted it back, set 
his feet on the railing and proceeded to state a purpose 
that had kept his tongue almost silent all the way home, 
and his mind busy with the all-important matter—to him 
just then. 

“If Gawan hadn’t been with us I should have spoken 
of it sooner,” he started by way of introduction, and 
lighting a cigar, after having handed one to his father. 

“Well,” returned the latter, “if it’s good it’ll keep, I 
reckon, an’ if it’s bad there's no hurry.” The interests 
of father and son were taking opposite courses. 

“It’s neither—that is,” Eldred Morris quickly corrected 
himself, “it’s no news at all, only a favor I want you to 
do for me: something that means more to me than any¬ 
thing I have ever asked you before.” 

For a moment John Morris looked closely at his son, 
a questioning light flooding his large, steel-blue, fearless, 
fighting eyes. Eldred looked aimlessly at the gray ash 
beginning to form on his cigar. Across the mirror of 
John Morris’s mind there flitted a girl, but this passed. 
Eldred would not ask his father’s opinion there, nor 
favor. That question had been debated to a settled 
status. The elder gave his interrogation words: 

“If it’s anythin’ I can do with a clear conscience, my 
boy, the favor’s yours without askin’.” 

“Well, I believe it is. I want you to let up on this 
union agitation and—” Eldred faltered a moment—“and 
do what you can to get the mine back the way it was 
before . . crushing back words that came to his 

lips anent much “wire pulling” he had been impelled to 
do with Turley to obtain a re-instatement of John Morris 


70 


In The Carbon Hills 


in the company’s favor. Perhaps it had been better said, 
for the changing colors on the elder man's face made 
obvious to the son that the proposition was a decided 
surprise, and one foredoomed as being to the other almost 
an insult. 

To John Morris being unionized meant the same as 
State-wide prohibition means to the intolerant disciples 
of grape-juice and buttermilk: the panacea of all human 
ills. Like most men he had one paramount obsession. 
This was his. Moreover, he had had peace too long to 
remain content. Eldred Morris stammered doubtfully, 
his father remaining silent, waiting for him to finish. 

“The men will be none the worse for it while I’m in 
charge if I can help it, and you’ll be a great deal better,” 
he added meaningly. Then speaking to his mother who 
had just come onto the porch: “Sit here between me and 
dad.” 

. “Why, you’re not going to fight, I hope,” Mrs. Morris 
smiled outwardly as she took the chair pulled forward 
by Eldred, in her heart sensing another conflict of opinion 
such as were becoming too frequent for her peace of 
mind, at least. Her quick eyes remarked in semi-alarm 
the change in her husband and the quiet but sullen at¬ 
titude of her son. 

“Oh, no,” the latter assured her, smiling away her 
fears, “but I want dad to do something-.” 

“That dad ain't likely to do, my son, not if he had your 
interest as The Bffie's foreman ten thousand times more to 
heart,” interposed John Morris with much emphasis. The 
agitator deals largely in extravagances as well as incon¬ 
vertible fact. “The welfare of too many families is at 
stake,” he added. Then, more quietly: “You was speak- 
in' for Wilkes, or just yourself?” 

Eldred bridled instantly. “There’s nobody in it but 
me—not yet; but it wont be long until there is if it’s kept 
up,” he replied suggestively. 



In The Carbon Hills 


7 l 


John Morris ignored the latter. “Then I can th’ easier 
refuse, though it might benefit you a little no doubt by 
agreein’.” 

A little!’ ” Eldred’s eyes flew wide open. “I’d hard¬ 
ly ask you to do it unless it meant more than a little. 
It simply means that instead of two masters to please 
and suggest how I shall do my work, and who I shall 
employ or discharge, I’d have two hundred and fifty. 
And that many men working peaceably are enough to 
handle, dad.” 

There was as yet no definite recognition of the union 
at the mine, but there was a strong undercurrent of au¬ 
thority growing in the “Pit Committee,” and a decided 
tendency to ostracise and otherwise deal harshly with 
those employees as yet indifferent to the change. The 
woman rocked through the silence. 

“A foreman’s actions have their own Law-prescribed 
limitations,” Eldred resumed, “and the union would limit 
them still more.” 

“That is provided it’s powerful enough,” rejoined John 
Morris, speaking to past experience. “Men are like 
monkeys an’ parrots in imitatin’ what others do, an’ 
while you foremen an’ superintendents have state certifi¬ 
cates the men have numbers an’ the majority rules, 
Eldred. But supposin’ I did do as you wanted wouldn’t 
they get another man or a dozen in as president of the 
local? Sure, an’ they would right away,” John Morris 
summed up his opinion of the difficulty. 

“Yes, and perhaps one not as good as your father 
where you are concerned, Eldred,” interposed Emily 
Morris solicitously. 

“Nor Wilkes an’ Elizabeth,” the blue eyes beside her 
twinkled while the tongue below them probed. Emily 
Morris also made a little inquiry in the same direction, 
while seemingly trying to cut off the very thing she 
sought, by asking John Morris with large surprise if he 


7 2 


In The Carbon Hills 


was so anxious as that to lose their son since he rang 
in young women who had nothing to do with the mat¬ 
ter. “I shouldn’t wonder but you’ll lose him soon 
enough.” 

“No more than we’ve done already, Emmy, I hope,” 
Morris retorted with much meaning unexpressed in his 
words. “I reckon when it comes to gettin’ into the 
Wilkes family he won’t need any help of mine no more 
than his dad did,” at which Emily Morris smiled affec¬ 
tionately upon The Local President, and reminiscently 
bethought her of her lover’s impetuous and insistent 
wooing. “But he’ll need all the get-up he’s got an’ the 
job with more money in it as he ain’t—unless I’m a 
poor judge of some women’s nature, Emmy Morris,” 
which left to the auditor the decision as to which of the 
two women at Wilkes’s John Morris referred to. 

Obviously for his specific elucidation the elder con¬ 
tinued as the young man came from the kitchen where 
he had gone in search of matches: “It ain’t always the 
young feller as is the squarest of shoulder an’ morals as 
the girl takes, more’s the pity for Lizzie Wilkes or any 
other who’s daddy-in-law-to-be has money not only for 
mines, Emmy, but to buy the daughter-in-law too in 
some-.” 

The miner’s diatribe on marital problems was cut short 
by a heavy hand laid on his shoulder, and a face above 
him darkened, with lips set hard and firm. “Alright, 
son,” he yielded, and the mother looked her anxiety while 
her husband’s pipe beclouded the atmosphere to an extent 
more dangerous to Emily Morris’s comfort than the 
cigar had done. “But I was thinkin’,” the still undaunted 
orator persisted, “what unexpected things does turn up 
to bring girls into families as daughters-in-laws, some¬ 
times, an’ was supposin’ for a minute that you an’ Lizzie 
Wilkes was married, for the men to go on workin’ un¬ 
der the old conditions instead of them they’ve got ready 



In The Carbon Hills 


7 3 


for Roger to sign as—as soon as they’re stronger—that 
it would make it better for the employin’ families as you’d 
be mixed with an’- 

“Say himself’ urged Mrs. Morris, setting her hand 
over her husband's mouth and pushing the hot pipe 
dangerously near his cheek. 

“Himself, then," agreed the accomodating unionist, re¬ 
turning instantly to the mooted point, “in the employin’ 
family, but what would it mean for a hundred others 
like us?” 

“Steadier work and no strikes over this, that and the 
other thing,” retorted Eldred, looking into the fringe of 
a coppice hiding the home of Elizabeth from his sight. 

“P’raps . . . but lower wages an’ longer hours for 

sure, while Rummel has anythin’ to say anyway.” 

As this was but a confirmation of his own assertions, 
probably at times indiscreet as they were true and earn¬ 
est, the young foreman made no denial. He preferred to 
evade discussion just then of the sub-rosa ownership. 
He contented himself by asserting his belief that if the 
ex-miner found it possible to advance wages and de¬ 
crease hours he would do so without compulsion or 
coercion. 

“I’ve no doubt about-Wilkes doin’ it; I have 

about it bein’ done at The Bffie ,” John Morris replied 
sententiously, emptying his pipe of its ash over the ve¬ 
randa rail. “If it is done voluntar’y all the papers in 
The United States will have it in six inch types,” The 
Local President exaggerated out of pure joyousness of 
spirit. The opposing counsel seemed to have a poor case. 
“Ain’t there always some notes due, a first mortgage or 
somethin’, some new machinery needed or another mine 
somewhere to be had at a bargain, or wife an’ daughter 
wants a new concutt-grand pianner while the poor dig¬ 
ger’s daughter or sweetheart—who is just as sweet an’ 
lovable—can’t get a second-hand organ at ten dollars, an’ 




74 


In The Carbon Hills 


has to wash her wrapper on Saturday nights so she can 
appear respectable on Sunday mornin’, don’t she, 
Emmy?” 

“Emmy” smiled and rocked, entering fully into the 
humor of her husband’s “agitator speech,” informal 
though it was, with all the ardor that had characterized 
their courting days. John Morris had every word by 
heart, having repeated it scores of times before his first 
son was born. The fact that it was true only in the 
specific rather than the generic state bore no significance 
to him. The metaphorical allusion of the true “spouter” 
needs not necessarily run parallel with actuality. And 
by this time Eldred Morris had also caught the contagion. 
He clapped his open palm on his fathers’ knee and told 
him: 

“That’s a good one, dad; might as well be hanged for 
an old sheep as a young lamb, I reckon,” thinking at the 
same time of the similarity in value of Margaret 
Thomas’s chiffon and Elizabeth Wilkes’s lawn. 

“But there’s truth in it, ain’t there, boy?” the orator 
questioned. 

“Yes, if you hunt for it with a miscroscope,” trucu¬ 
lently retorted the foreman, still endeavoring to smile 
through the chagrin natural because of the failure of 
his half-hearted request. 

“Or if you don’t; ain’t the company in the business to 
get all it can out of it?" persisted Morris, “an’ ain’t it 
human nature to take the biggest share if the other feller 
will let you? Oh, boy, oh boy! them books of yours 
don't learn you all as is to be learned in minin’ life.” 

“Of course if you look at it in that way,” Eldred went 
still deeper into the rut, “everyone’s naturally on the 
lookout for his own interest first; that is, speaking gen¬ 
erally, an incontrovertible fact.” 

“Exactly; that’s why I think the men’ll do right in 
joinin’ their fellers in this district as soon as possible. 


In The Carbon Hills 


7 5 


It’s the only way of gettin’ what belongs to ’em.” 

“But don’t you think they could have picked a better 
time to start this thing up than just now?” The Idealist 
sullenly persisted. “It seems too much like kicking a 
man when he’s down.” 

“More like askin’ him if he’ll do so an’ so before you 
let him get up, ain’t it, Eldred?” queried Morris with a 
chuckle. Then: “The whole thing's a good bit like 
playin’ a game of checkers with Collson or MacDonald: 
get your man in a corner then jump him to the king- 
row,” again chuckling heartily. 

Eldred was too moody to see anything laughable in it. 

“Did any of the operators, while this field was all un¬ 
organized, ever send someone round to make sure their 
men’s cupboards was full an’ their credit good at Bilkin’s 
Store an’ at Colville before postin’ a cut, an’ if they 
found it wasn’t put the notice of reduction in their 
pocket till it was? Oh, Eldred, boy! I had no idee bein’ 
in love with th’ operator’s daughter would make the 
foreman as blind as that. I’d surely thought all them 
letters an’ book-learnin’ would help you to see further 
through a brick wall than the trowel marks on the mortar, 
wouldn’t you, Emmy?” Morris turned to the chair where 
his wife had been sitting. Unnoticed she had slipped in 
to get supper for the family. 

“Well, I’ll learn,” the younger man retorted. “Two 
can play at most games.” 

The miner looked at his son quizzically, then, sensing 
what he thought his meaning, vexed. He added a word 
of warning and reproof: 

“I hope your wantin’ to get even won’t never run 
away with your sense, Eldred, nor make you selfish 
enough to take what ain’t rightfully yours because you 
might be in a position to do it. A man don’t have to be 
told where to cut th’ apple if he’s the right kind, boy.” 

Eldred Morris explained more thoughtfully: “I didn’t 


76 


In The Carbon Hills 


exactly mean that. What I did mean was that if I felt 
I was in the right I wouldn’t scruple to put in a blow or 
two, while the other fellow was down, to clinch my ar¬ 
gument, that is when I have authority I haven’t got now, 
which I shall have some day, perhaps,” he added optimis¬ 
tically as an afterthought. 

Mrs. Morris called them in to supper, hoping to shut 
off the always dangerous theme between these two. The 
miner continued it after they were seated, letting his 
tea and food cool rather than lose an opportunity to 
carry a point. 

“If you think you’re right, man to man, an’ accordin’ 
to the way of fightin’ such things to a finish, all well an’ 
good. But I hope your mother nor me won’t never live 
to see you do otherwise, Eldred, an’ a little questionin’ 
of conscience an’ lookin’ at the thing from t’other man’s 
point of view as well as your own will always tell you.” 

John Morris attacked the lesser problem on his plate, 
while his son ate also in silence, head bowed, seemingly 
somewhat dejected. Mrs. Morris didn’t make it any 
better by adding: 

“No, my boy, don't ever be guilty of doing anything 
to the men under you, no matter how powerful you 
might be, as I, for one, have hope you will be,” she 
beamed, “that you wouldn’t like done to you in their 
place,” ended the motherly counsel that was all love and 
sympathy, as Emily Morris poised above her son’s cup 
the Sunday tea-pot of triple-plate and looked at the china 
appropriately iterating her sentiment in a gilted motto of 
“Remember Me.” Mrs. Morris had been a miner’s wife a 
good number of years longer than the mother of a fore¬ 
man in the same industry, and her quick sympathies were 
yet with the men of the pick and shovel rather than those 
whose tools were the anemometer and the Davy Lamp. 
And then, following a question from Eldred as to Tom’s 


In The Carbon Hills 


77 

whereabouts and his not being at table she spoke more 
sorrowfully. 

“Ah, Eldred, there’s real trouble going to come on 
your father and me one of these days. If only Esther 
was as sensible as—as Elizabeth on Wednesday night 
when she and that young Methodist minister came over 
with the 'Piscopalian preacher from Colville! There’s 
a sensible girl for you, John Morris . . . if I do say 

it before Eldred . . 

The mother in Emily Morris fought hard against her 
saying it, however, but the instinctive trait of woman to 
further mating won out. One part of her would have 
died of grief to lose her boy to another woman, the other 
half of joy in exultation of its satisfactory accomplish¬ 
ment. 

John Morris looked up from his egg, his face drawn 
like a U. P. Elder’s at Fourthly’s last round. His eyes 
looked the interrogation his tongue could not resist. 

“Have you ever heard me say anythin’ to the opposite, 
Mrs. Morris?” he drawled, “that you seen fit to emfursize 
the contrast so strong?” Then, after a moment’s p^use: 
“I should think it would be more fittin’ for me to say, 
‘There’s a fine sensible daughter-in-law for you, Emmy 
Morris,’ if you can bear it.” 

“I’m thinking unless my eyes are failing me I’ll have 
worse to bear before long,” the matron diverted the 
subject as she moved slowly about the table clearing up 
the dishes, her ample bosom heaving with the slight ex¬ 
ertion, and her face which had been drawn now smiling. 
Emily Morris was a true daughter of Eve, and, while 
one of the best of women, took a secret delight in an 
afifaire d’amour. But like the good mother she was she 
hoped even while she feared for a satisfactory outcome. 
Eldred had not seen Esther recently. He said as much, 
and that he thought his mother’s suspicions unfounded. 

“You old married women are always getting the young 


In The Carbon Hills 


78 

and pretty ones that aren’t married into such difficul¬ 
ties,” he smiled across at her, “aren’t they, dad?” 

“I believe they do enjoy it a bit—must put ’em in 
mind of their own younger days,” casually remarked The 
Local President, pulling slowly on a pipe which a moment 
later went sailing over the carpet. Half angrily, Emily 
Morris had resented the insinuation she wrongly con¬ 
ceived directed at herself. 

“Ho, ho!” Morris exclaimed, bending to pick it up, 
“mother’s gettin’ mad, now, my boy; better cut the girls 
out an’ take dynamite or the union as somethin’ peace¬ 
able to talk about,” his sides shaking with laughter at 
the little riffle in the usual calm. The woman standing 
at Eldred’s side wasn't. She was undecided whether to 
laugh or cry, but seeing the two men taking the matter 
in good humor burst into a smile, too. Then, without the 
least pretension, she went over to Morris and put her 
arms around his neck and kissed him. The union had 
won this battle anyhow. 

“You know I didn’t mean it,” the dark eyes looked up 
to the blue ones, her voice tremulous. 

“Nor me neither, Emmy-love,” which was the very 
apex in the miner’s pyramid of affectionate expression 
verbally, as he put his arm round her waist. 

Eldred Morris had discreetly gone to the porch, where 
a moment later he was joined by his father and the young 
couple whose adventures in love had been the cause of 
the scene. Mrs. Morris, hearing Esther’s voice, came 
out also, and with suspicious smoothness the conversa¬ 
tion turned into other channels. 

Quite serenly Mrs. Morris set forth a chair for the 
dark-haired young lady who was no longer in her em¬ 
ploy, and, skillfully as women can, led the talk into a 
smoothing expression regarding the exquisite joy it 
would have given her if the two girls had only been 
there together. As it was she was glad to see Esther, 


In The Carbon Hills 


79 


to note—with lingering scrutiny—how well she was look¬ 
ing: her Aunt MacDonald and she had remarked the 
very same thing only yesterday, and said what a pity it 
was that Esther couldn't have a steady place with Mrs. 
Wilkes or Mrs. Turley or even Mrs. Rummel, but, they 
both supposed (simultaneously) that the latter was too 
close to keep a woman to do all her work et cetra and 
et cetra. 

And poor Esther blushed furiously, then, even while 
the older woman’s eyes still rested on her form, turned 
suddenly white and fanned herself with her tiny hand¬ 
kerchief, remarking that Tom and she had walked rather 
fast from the funeral in order to be in time for supper, 
and that “the day was terrible hot,” didn’t Mrs. Morris 
think so? 

Poor Esther! What shifts a torturing conscience doth 

make! 


CHAPTER X. 


THE SUBSTITUTE 

On the Saturday afternoon of the week following 
Elizabeth Wilkes ordered Gawan to hitch up the family 
carriage to convey her immaculately—as became the 
young lady of most distinction in Carbonia—to the 
dance in Collson’s Grove. 

“Mr. Morris will drive, and put the horses in,” she 
told Gawan sweetly, “so I suppose you can go when 
you’re ready.’’ Then she flitted up the steps into the 
house. Mickey played the cello in our local “orchestra.” 

He followed from the garden where he had been 
doing some chores, branching off at right angles to reach 
the stables, and muttering regarding the luck of some 
people as to others, and one young gentleman of his ac¬ 
quaintance in particular. “There he goes an’ gets a bit 
of paper with a lot of dufunnies on it as sets him over 
men old enuff to be his grandaddy, an’ as if that ain’t 
sufficient for a bye of his tender age he’s goin’ to cut 
young Rummel out wi’ all his ryulties an’ banks unless 
Micky’s losin’ his eyesight. No such thing as luck? 
Well I should say as how could there be when one or 
two hog it all, an’ that’s a fac’, Jimmie,” addressing the 
chore boy who was ridding up for the night. “An’ they 
sayin’ as if he’d wrassle a bit more with the pen an’ a 
little less with buckin’ pumps an’ fans an’ things that 
nothin’ in the .line o’ business would be beyant him, not 
even general superintendent or minin’ engineer.” 

Jimmie set aside some harness he had been oiling and 
wiped his hands on his trousers. “My dad says as he 

80 


In The Carbon Hills 


81 


thinks Jack Morris’s boy’ll have Mr. Turley’s place some¬ 
day, or maybe better, an’ them on’y diggers like him 

yy 

• • • • 

“Exactly,” agreed the amiable Gawan, “which is a 
good warnin’ for ye, Jimmie, lad, a pritty good warnin' 
for ye to do the same, maybe.” 

Alas for poor Jimmie. Carbonia had not a few such 
unfortunates cursed with a lax parentage which draws 
back the little it could do even without the sacrifice of 
its own desires, and, having tossed the child into the sea 
of life leave it to sink if it will. Jimmie couldn’t add a 
sum in addition had he been offered a gold coin for each 
numeral. Yet some of us even in Carbonia see naught 
but autocracy in compulsory schooling! Jimmie, grown, 
would sun-broil the little brains he had seeking for sul¬ 
phur and slate on some uncovered mine tipple, or tend 
a pump he never understands below ground for a mere 
pittance: the native nonentities of an industry having 
unlimited possibilities for all. 

It was a curious coincidence indeed, one must confess, 
that this same subject should have been under discussion 
in another place nearby. Roger Wilkes turned from the 
window, from which the path reaching to Morris’s at one 
end and The Effie at the other was plainly visible, 
to explain to Elizabeth why the foreman was so 
often delayed. During that meal his wife and daughter 
were made aware of certain conditions which sometimes 
upset everybody’s calculations and keep the repair-gangs 
moving from the order of work as originally laid out. 
“And of course the foreman must look after that even if 
one shift does sometimes stretch into two—for him. 
Why,” he smiled over at Mrs. Wilkes, “if that boy’s pay 
had been by the hour this last month I’ll swear his 
salary would be double. But we’re getting there, Effie; 
we’re getting there. We’ll soon have to furnish him an 
assistant, and if MacDonald gets that certificate he’s 


82 


In The Carbon Hills 


after I think he’ll be the man,” sagely remarked Wilkes, 
doing certain occult sums in calculation by adding to 
and detracting from a pile of crumbs. “He has a big 
family, you know, and, well, the store must be looked 
after, too,” Roger added suggestively. 

While her father spoke of Eldred Morris Elizabeth’s 
cheeks changed to a deeper crimson, and her eyes spark¬ 
led with amusement at his suggestion regarding Mac¬ 
Donald and the store as she watched the erstwhile 
miner wipe his hands quite complacently on his napkin, 
and his lips after drinking on the same article instead of 
the back of his hairy hand. He had not always done so, 
but persistence on the feminine side of the house had 
won out in the end as it generally does. 

Mrs. Wilkes returned to the subject by a suggestion 
that she in her husband’s place would also consider the 
advisability of a man of family as chief foreman under 
similar circumstances. Effie Wilkes had known the 
pangs of poverty semi and complete so long that she had 
ever a latent dread of its return in some insidious way. 
Any official move that bolstered the intermediate position 
in which the family then existed never passed without in 
a certain sense having her sanction. Wilkes shook his 
head. 

“We might scour the district and the entire list of 
eligibles and not get such another as Morris. I know 
he looks young,” he added parenthetically, “for such a 
responsible position, as I’ve often remarked to Turley, 
but as Sam says there’s, the right stuff in him—for us.” 
Roger Wilkes divided the pile of crumbs. “We might 
get the store percentage of his hundred a month, we’ll 
say; that’s this pile,” shoving aside a heap about the 
size of a walnut, “and lose this,” putting the partly-cut 
loaf beside it, “in decreased output and increased expense. 
In the lower men—those who get their orders from 
Morris—the work isn’t original, and no changes are made 


In The Carbon Hills 


83 


involving a large outlay as a result of their ideas. In 
that case men who deal largely at the store have the pref¬ 
erence when possible for us to discriminate. If we have 
aces we play them, Effie, if the other fellow has them 
to our kings we play accordingly.” 

“Oh, I see,” languidly replied the little lady at the 
table’s opposite side. “But so far in all your calculations 
I have heard you mention your superintendent but twice, 
Roger. What does Brother Sam do for his salary?” 
Mrs. Wilkes dipped her nose to a bouquet that had 
added charm of color to that Saturday afternoon meal. 

“Turley found Morris’s work too practically common- 
sense when he was able to get around to interfere much, 
Effie; he does less now. But,” hastened Turley’s broth- 
er-in-law in apology: “he has plenty to look after. A 
mine like ours turns up a multitude of things on the 
surface as well as below, and someone must be there to 
see that our interests are—er—are .” 

“Conserved,” Elizabeth smiled at the quondam miner’s 
efforts to use a synonym for “looked after.” 

“Yes, preserved, Lizzie, that’s just the word; means 
putting dollars in the bank to pay overdue notes in this 
case instead of taking fruit out of a jar in the other,” 
and Wilkes wondered why Elizabeth looked so oddly at 
him and both women laughed. “Turley’s badly crippled,” 
he went on regardless, “but not in that part that prevents 
him from sizing up a foreman’s efficiency by the length 
of the black stream as a yard stick. The amount of 
coal that goes into the flats is the last and best test after 
all of a man’s worth to us.” 

Wilkes paused, poising a match before the end of a 
cigar. Strange is this eloquence that springs from op¬ 
posite sources in the same brain! The day had been, and 
it didn’t seem so long ago either, when Roger Wilkes 
would have spoken more crude but with equal conviction 
on the demerits of such a proceedure in preference, citing 



8 4 


In The Carbon Hills 


numberless instances now grouped in the title of “Safety 
First” to prove it wrong. Verily that philosophy were 
poor indeed that need go far to find spokes running 
diametrically opposite from the same hub either in a 
carriage factory or the human hive. 

At the table Elizabeth moodily toyed with her cup. 
Pushing it aside she plucked a pink flower from the table 
vase and tore petal from beside petal until the white cloth 
was littered with a pale crimson heap. She had at her 
tongue’s end a question regarding Morris, but, crushing 
it back with changing color and mind she went to her 
room. Then, having loked at the clock Elizabeth looked 
out of the window. 

The path stretched its green edges toward Morris’s and 
thence to the village. Neither man, maid nor child 
traversed it. She heard her father go down the walk on 
his way to Colville, which he invariably did now each 
week end. The four mile walk there and back did him 
good, he said, failing to specify whether physically or 
mentally. He rarely used the carriage. 

Now slightly impatient with Eldred Morris’s delin¬ 
quency—quite a frequent occurrence in this premise, by 
the way—Miss Wilkes returned to her dressing table and 
pulled off a pair of mouse-colored kid gloves reaching 
nearly to the lace on her elbows, then having looked out 
of the window again she pulled them on again for the 
second time. She buttoned them slowly and looked at 
the clock which didn't seem to be in any haste at all. She 
slipped down to the kitchen, intending to ask Sophie, the 
maid, to go to Morris’s—where Eldred of course now 
lived—in the hope that he had perhaps gone around an¬ 
other way. She even framed the words for the girl to 
use to cast aside any suspicion as to her real purpose in 
being there, but the kitchen was empty. Sophie also was 
going to the grove, but being less conventional than her 
young mistress had gone voluntarily to meet “her feller.” 
There’s merit and peace of mind sometimes in humility. 


In The Carbon Hills 


85 


And still Elizabeth waited, ostensibly reading, in reality 
seeing only those who now were going past toward the 
wood. Some she knew and spoke to, some of the girls 
she nodded and waved at with a few square inches of 
cambric as the flag of friendliness. Most of the men were 
sober, neatly dressed and well behaved, some carelessly 
so and still more carelessly washed, the rims of their eye¬ 
lashes still embellished with the black dust of the mine. 
These neither spoke to Elizabeth nor she to them. One 
only seemed the worse of liquor: a young man recently 
discharged by Morris for abusing a mule. “A tough 
proposition/’ Eldred had called him the night of the 
benefit in Fraternal Hall when Constable Collson and the 
foreman had put him out. When he came opposite Eliza¬ 
beth heard the foreman’s name coupled with a threat of 
somebody getting a licking that night. The rest of the 
group pulled him hurriedly past. 

Again she looked at the clock, while through the open 
window the wind brought the rough “tuning” notes of 
Gawan’s violoncello, and debated with her desire the 
wisdom of going to the dance that night anyhow. If the 
disgruntled mule driver met Morris it would likely cause 
trouble; if the latter came it would seem like implying 
cowardice if she explained, and her motive stood every 
chance of misconstruction if she didn't. She would go— 
certainly—if he came . . . He didn’t. 

Amos Rummel, opportunely as the hero in a book, did. 
The dances in the grove were widely known and gener¬ 
ally patronized. Many young people came up from the 
college town, where all such affairs were tabooed by the 
faculty because of the students who sought what they 
were denied there at other places, as always has been the 
way of Youth. Such a group stopped for a moment to 
speak with Elizabeth. The others went on while Rum¬ 
mel remained. On opposite sides man and maid leaned 
over the gate at the bottom of the walk, a finely-built 


86 


In The Carbon Hills 


and handsome rascal, he, with eyes as blue as the girl’s 
own, as finely-attired as she, and wearing to boot an in¬ 
variable smile and a devil-may-care personality strangely 
pleasing to young women from 20 to 60 . 

He coaxed sedulously, mildly, and only briefly did 
Elizabeth waver. She was as inordinately fond of the 
fantastic maze as Amos. Neither toward the mine nor 
Morris’s was there now a man in sight, but at the veranda 
behind them a woman stepped onto the walk. Elizabeth 
ran back, flushed and flustered, nervous from the long 
tension and indecision. 

“Amos wants me to go with him, mother,” she whis¬ 
pered, crimsoning to the tips of her ears. In the distance 
the group from Colville could be heard but not seen. 
They were very happy, as denoted by loud laughter. 
Mrs. Wilkes moved as majestically as a little woman 
may toward the gate, her daughter beside her. 

“Mr. Rummel can surely help you enjoy the dancing 
as well as—as anyone else, dear child, I fancy, if,” she 
continued after a slight questioning pause at which she 
looked oddly at the girl, “if you will insist on going.” 

The young man at the gate bowed, and in a manner 
which would have done honor to a Chesterfield said 
“Thank you, Mrs. Wilkes.” 

To herself the little lady smiled, then sighed slightly. 
The indiscretions of her dear papa’s youth in attending 
such places (she omitted her own part therein) seemed 
hereditary in Elizabeth. Aloud she advised the latter to 
run in and get a fine Paisley shawl of her own hanging in 
the hall. 

“The night will be cool,” she admonished, and to the 
youth at the gate: “Elizabeth had intended accompanying 
her papa to town, but as he prefers to walk she changed 
her mind at the last moment. But wasn’t the intent for¬ 
tunate? It would save her dressing. And Mr. Rummel 
could run to the stable and stop Gawan’s helper, Jimmie, 


In The Carbon Hills 


87 


from hitching—no, unhitching—” the flurried lady 
amended with a smile as sweet as the miniature engrav¬ 
ing on the upper left corner of certain notes her husband 
had signed, said engravings bearing the legend: “Amos 
Rummel, President First National Bank of Colville, 
Pennsylvania.” It wasn’t far, of course, but Mr. Rummel 
should drive her over, as the dear child would be tired 
with dancing ere the night was out. 

And of course Mr. Rummel ran, and, finding the horses 
hitched and all ready to hand, brought them out and fast¬ 
ened them, while at the little lady’s smiling suggestion he 
went in to wait and tell her all about his dear mamma’s 
recent indisposition and the trouble that had caused her 
to discharge the rebellious Esther. For despite the fact 
that Elizabeth had been, apparently, ready for any func¬ 
tion there were still a few little touches left incomplete. 
No hat was necessary, but the fine shawl her mother 
had recommended would be very appropriate for the fair 
shoulders as Mr. Rummel smilingly arranged it. 

Thus they walked down to the gate, where he helped 
her into the carriage, and, while she patted the soft, 
clinging dress folds into place, coyly suggested that he 
climb in beside her. Of course, where would he sit but 
beside her? She didn’t care to drive even if she had 
taken the front seat. 

So with much laughter over nothing in particular the 
vehicle rolled off along the road to the west—the grove 
being in the other direction. It was a good mile or two 
further that way, but what is a mile with good horses, a 
warm, sensuous evening, the zest of Youth and a pretty 
girl beside you? Forsooth, Roadmaster Time, make your 
mile to Collson’s Grove this evening exactly seventeen 
thousand yards long! 


CHAPTER XI. 


A VISITOR AT COLLSON’S BATCH 

An hour or so later an old man sat smoking beneath a 
pine tree in his yard, smoking and filling and smoking 
again, his old corn-cob pipe smouldering like the eternal 
fires of Krakatoa. On his lap a tiny rat-terrier blink¬ 
ed in her naps, and snapped with sudden awakening 
when the ears of a big hound came into a too close prox¬ 
imity. Nellie, being of that gender common to other 
beings stung oftenest by the green monster, was a jealous 
little midget. While the old man smoked he listened, 
his “good ear'’ trained in that direction where stood a 
grove a facetious Gawan had named for some reason the 
old lampman could never fathom nor forgive. 

Changing occasionally the light wind wafted the 
mingled sounds away, but, turning, brought with it 
sounds to which his feet had often stepped in youth. He 
puffed in silent sympathy with the hugg! hugg! hugg! 
of the viol, which alone of The Ancient Minstrelsy could 
penetrate the dulling ears at that distance. Then, when 
some elated youth would join the hugg with rymthic heel 
in those intervals between the caller’s commands the old 
man spoke to the terrier: 

“That’s Eldred, Nellie, I’ll bet yer,” or “That’s Tom— 
an‘ Est’er.” And once in a long while a still cleverer bit 
of clogging rode the wind and, whispered the old miner 
beneath the tree: “That's Young Rummel: the best 
dancer in the lot!” muttering an addition at which the 
terrier, remarking even in her sleep the change in her 
master’s voice, rose in fear, her little brown ears twitch- 

88 


In The Carbon Hills 


89 


ing, and, lying flat on her back with paws up in supplica¬ 
tion for renewed friendliness—following a trick the old 
man had learned her—suffered herself to be turned and 
her shaggy back stroked soothingly, the old man telling 
her: “I daint mean you, Nellie, but him!” 

And as the hour passed the tiny dog cuddled like a 
brown ball still closer to her aged companion, for the 
night grew chilly. The wind must have changed for the 
thudding feet had stopped just as Collson ventured into 
the house to light a feeble lamp. He came out again 
murmuring something about there still being “smells of 
bloomin’ skunks an* things,” on his shoulders a great coat 
of antique martial design, for neither he nor Nellie could 
brook the night air with impunity. 

The room he had left was not immaculate by any 
means. It did indeed smell horribly, but it was of un- 
fragrant cabbage and onions boiled and the effluvia of 
stove-heated oily clothes. The labor of the lamp-office 
and the mine is dirty—honest dirt certainly—black and 
odoriferous. And Esther had not scrubbed her Uncle 
Collson’s batch that day, which was indeed an unusual 
lapse when she was in Carbonia through the week. For 
Saturday was the old miner’s one day of partial cleanli¬ 
ness. Yet while his thoughts wandered to this delin¬ 
quency the girl appeared, ghost-like in her white dress 
with the darkening firmament behind her. She stood in 
the path a moment without speaking. 

Collson exhibited no surprise that Esther should have 
come so late and dressed so. The old miner’s calm was 
rarely shocked out of its usual groove. Nerves steeled of 
necessity to forty years of underground tragedy meet the 
lesser things of life with outward complacency at least. 
He spoke first. 

“Hello, Est’er,” he said simply, quietly, “take my 
cheer.” 

“I’ll stand, you sit down Uncle Enoch,” she murmured, 


9 ° 


In The Carbon Hills 


looking not at him but at the grass in the yard, and both 
lapsed into silence. 

Collson reached out his stiff fingers for his still smoul¬ 
dering pipe and set it going. Collson met every big and 
little crisis of his life and others near him with tobacco. 
We have known worse weapons; so had he. He looked 
at the girl but her head was bent, and his ears weren’t 
acute to occasional sighs. 

“What’s wrong?” he asked finally. 

Esther replied only by swallowing hard. 

“What’s afoot?” Collson persisted. 

The girl still choked back something in her throat 
while Collson awaited her pleasure without further urg¬ 
ing. 

“I had a little trouble at the grove, that’s all,” she said, 
offering no explanation of her other delinquency. 

The old man looked at her closely, doubtfully, without 
speaking. 

“I did, really, Uncle Enoch,” she replied, impetuously 
insistent against the doubt she saw in his eyes. 

“With Tom?” 

“No, with Amos Rummel,” she stammered. 

Collson laid aside the pipe. “Ugh,” he grunted, “what’s 
this about? Daint the byes take your part? Wha’d he 
do ? not hit you !” 

“Oh, no, just catch him hittin’ me,” Esther said sav- 
agely, perplexed to explain lucidly. “Only Tom was 
there, an’—an’ he wasn’t with me—then—only Amos,” 
she stammered fearfully, desiring to explain to that one 
of all Carbonia who loved her best, if we except Tom 
Morris, whose love was different but equally intense. 
“I—I had somethin’ I had to tell him an’ ask him what 
he was—ask him about,” she forced the words rapidly, 
“an’ he laughed in my face an’ asked me to go an’ dance 
with him ! I smashed him one in the face instead. Tom 
was close but I wouldn’t let him interfere nor come home 
with me.” 


In The Carbon Hills 


9 1 


He had. Not far behind her he had watched her enter 
Collson’s gate. Then through the field he went home. 

As she entered Esther's voice weakened with the 
proximity of tears that would not much longer be de¬ 
nied. It was with a struggle she said: 

“Eldred was goin’ to be there but I heard there was 
somethin’ up at TK Efjie —a man hurt very bad. Rumme* 
was with Miss Wilkes.” 

The old miner was all interest in a moment. In the 
other premise information had but confirmed suspicion, 
and he immediately switched it into a pigeon-hole of his 
mind, to be referred to later. He felt instinctively he 
had not heard the last of it. But this accident, that was 
instant. 

“A man’s binn hurt, then? Did you hear as who it 
was, Est’er? One of the day-men?” 

Esther shook hear head abstractedly. “I didn’t hear,” 
she replied. She had slipped silently to the grass, still 
head bowed, and her fingers twisted a fold of her dress 
until it tore. The old man smoked on, awaiting her so¬ 
lution complete as she had given it in part, apprehensive 
of greater aggravation than mere repugnance to the 
young man she had struck. But insofar as Esther was 
concerned he was doomed to never hear the story from 
her lips. She twisted the subject as she twisted her dress, 
telling him that that wasn’t what she had come in for. 

“I’m going away—after a while—but I’ve arranged 
with Margie Thomas to clean up Saturdays for you until 
her an’ Farley’s married.” 

“Goin’ away!” he repeated, the tremor in his voice un¬ 
usual for Collson. “Well?” he questioned largely in that 
monosyllabic, his old teeth grinding hard on the reed 
stem between them. The old miner-heart was too tender 
to wound the girl before him by saying that which he 
would have said otherwise. 

In the pause imposed by herself Esther had risen and 


92 


In The Carbon Hills 


strode toward the picket gate. In the village homes 
lights were now shining. They seemed like stars through 
the now welling tears, but not of hope. Outwardly she 
did not cry, but she knew she would if she stayed a 
minute longer. 

“I—I—can’t tell you tonight,” she turned at the gate, 
“but I’ll come up tomorrow, maybe. I’m stayin’ at Aunt 
Mary MacDonald’s tonight,” the old man heard her say 
as she went quickly through the gate, almost as ghost¬ 
like as she had entered. He followed her to the road, 
and stood there until she reached the first house in the 
row, then he went in. 

Why Esther did not go to Collson’s the next day, and 
why she never told her trouble in its entirety to that one 
of us all who was her best and most faithful friend as 
well as a relative, remains for us one of the unfathom¬ 
able problems of woman’s psychology. 


CHAPTER XII. 


ADDING INSULT TO INJURY 

In Collson’s Grove incidents expected and unexpected 
were transpiring, tending toward the usual crisis in such 
cases. In this particular instance it disrupted the affair 
almost before it was well started. Farley, by virtue of 
several more drinks of fiery “rot-gut” had gone maniac- 
mad: a splendid subject for an immediate discourse on 
prohibition and a specialist in mania a potu on the morrow. 

Filled with false energy furnished at Maloney’s, loudly 
the ungentle, nick-named “Duck,” threatened to wipe the 
earth with every male present from the village, with 
particular emphasis on anything suffering under the bur¬ 
den of such ill-starred names as Wilkes and Morris. 
Twice they removed him and twice he returned and, the 
last time, probably because of Amos Rummel’s helping 
in forcing him from the platform because of vulgarity, 
the Carbonian set upon him. Someone suggested that 
someone else run for Constable Collson. 

In the meantime the fiddlers fiddled and the dancers 
danced while Rummel and Farley reached the road-edge, 
the former evading, Elizabeth following at a safe dis¬ 
tance, urging her escort to return home with her while 
even then the matter took a more vicious turn. Rummel 
had tried persuasion which only increased the miner’s 
rage, and the thudding of men’s feet on the hollow wood 
floor caused the waste of Farley’s words on the other. 
But they had slowly reached the road. There came a 
lull in the dancing and an expansiveness in Farley’s 
vocabulary created chiefly by the fumes of alcohol. In 

93 


94 


In The Carbon Hills 


the temporary quiet he fairly shrieked a vehement in¬ 
sinuation already become, in Carbonia, common gossip. 
Our village was ahead of Marconi in wireless transmis¬ 
sion of news. 

Hitherto Miss Wilkes’s escort had laughed the fel¬ 
low’s antics away from all seriousness, as, in fact, he did 
look rather comical with his derby tilted over his left 
eye, his right arm drawn back and his left thrust for¬ 
ward, posed for the anticipated onslaught in exactitude 
with the principles of “the noble art.” But this SOS 
called all the color from his antagonist’s face. 

“What did he say?” whispered Elizabeth, timidly 
clutching at Rummel’s arm. 

“A damned lie,” retorted her perturbed companion, 
“and I haven’t finished with him yet.” 

Therefore they slugged, gouged, tore at each other like 
a pair of fighting dogs, yet even to an apprentice in the 
“art” it soon became apparent that Amos was going to 
have the tussle of his life proving himself innocent in that 
way. Inured to daily hardship, and having the agility 
characteristic of the miner between twenty and thirty, 
and an unusual strength and stamina, Farley had an ad¬ 
vantage despite the uncertainty of his legs, at first. As 
he fought he gained steadiness and strength, while Rum- 
mel weakened. 

Also the miner grew blood-mad : the killing instinct of 
the man primordial surged into him with the rising 
heat and passion. Like a mad dog he frothed at the 
mouth, the semi-idiotic drunken stare, the leer and aim¬ 
less gymnastics, changed to the fierceness of a goaded 
bull. One solicitous young gentleman bearing the eu¬ 
phonious name of Clifford Adams, whose hat, unlike 
Farley’s, still remained a la mode Carbonia, suggested 
frofn somewhere near his left eyebrow that: 

“Youns girls had better skedaddle, as there’s goin’ to 
be a genuwine scrap here in lessen two minutes, an' 


In The Carbon Hills 


95 


some fur a-flyin’,” and true to the solicitous young gen- 
tleman’s prophecy something approximating fur or feath¬ 
ers did fly in less than two seconds. 

There came rolling over past the little group of now 
thoroughly excited women w r hose curiosity had impelled 
them to the scene, a whirling, cursing ball of mixed-up 
humanity, which sent them and their curiosity flying to a 
safer spot, all except Elizabeth and Margaret Thomas. 
Defiant to the last these two, being most concerned for 
the combatants, remained near, Elizabeth backing toward 
a tree the more easily to slip out of the way if necessary. 
Margaret evidenced no animosity toward the other girl; 
instead she spoke quietly aside to her of something which 
brought from Elizabeth the hope that if that were true 
she “hoped Farley would give him a good trouncing.” 

But the miner’s mind wasn’t altogether sure of that. 
He wasn’t acutely aware of the fact that a few minutes 
longer and Rummel would be done. To Farley he seem¬ 
ed to be holding out to a finish, and that not his own. 
But a knife! Someone near the tree screamed and the 
miner’s adversary incontinently fled. 

In blind rage Farley leaped like a painted Indian, the 
knife describing circles unpleasantly near the fright- 
stricken girl who alone remained near the tree. What 
might have followed is problematical: what did actually 
occur is a matter of local history, and commenced at the 
moment Farley’s knife poised upward to strike anything 
in his way. Behind him the line suddenly parted, a fist 
went up viciously, and the steel flew in a glittering arc 
covering several yards in its descent. 

“Morris!” somebody shouted. Faces were almost in¬ 
distinguishable where the crowd stood. The crowd went 
nearer as the murmur rose: “It’s The Bffie’s foreman!” 

The words acted like magic on Farley and the men 
who now held him. Morris caught sight of the woman 
beside the tree and made a step forward toward her, when 


96 


In The Carbon Hills 


the line of men broke and dropped into the general crowd 
apparently with the tacit consent to let the two men set¬ 
tle their own difficulties now the knife was gone. And, 
as though the opportunity had long been expected and 
desired, Farley wrenched himself loose from the last 
man essaying a feeble attempt to deter him, and rushed 
on Morris from the back with such impact that the fore¬ 
man fell and received a vicious kick before he could rise. 

In the black shadows a woman, also, almost fell and 
tried to scream but the effort died in her throat. She 
heard the labored breath of the struggling men and 
saw a loose, limp, arm hanging by Morris’s side when 
for the second or third time he rose from a fall. 

“Help him, you cowards!” she called, “he’s fighting 
with one arm, don’t you see?” 

Nobody interfered, and a moment later she saw Farley 
go violently to the grass on the road-side, and Morris 
straighten with a painfully-drawn look in his eyes. In 
the semi-dark she might have imagined that, but to her 
it seemed real, and also the idea that the look was di¬ 
rected at her. And again she appealed to the men to part 
them, but several girls were doing the same thing at the 
same time and being generally laughed at for their pains. 
Those nearest said they’d see both men got fair play. 
“They’re pretty evenly matched,” seemed to be the gen¬ 
eral opinion, not taking into account that one arm was 
fighting two. 

Farley had kicked the new enemy on the muscle-ball 
with a mule’s power, and, sober enough now to see his 
advantage, tried desperately to get hold of the uninjured 
arm. At length he got it. While Morris writhed to dis¬ 
engage himself—his only chance—Farley shouted to 
someone in the circle: 

“I’ve got him, Cliff! I’ve got the son-of-a-!” 

Who “Cliff” was Elizabeth had no time to wonder, for 
another pugilistically-inclined gentleman was thrust sav- 



In The Carbon Hills 


97 


agely where he belonged. The miner loves a square deal 
in work or play, and this was of the latter category to 
their primitive perception. He came back almost im¬ 
mediately, and, dancing up and down as near as the spec¬ 
tators would let him, urged: 

“You kin lick him better’n the mule, Ducky; give him 
hell!" which is proof that when drink is in sense goes 
out. Clifford Adams was also a driver at the big mine, 
but the possibilities of a discharge failed to outweigh his 
eagerness to see his erstwhile companion of the mule- 
barn get the best of the bout. 

Time and again the girl standing limp beside the tree 
continued her effort to have the men part them. Some 
looked at her in pity, some in contempt, wondering why 
anyone should be there to whom such an affair wasn’t 
joyously thrilling. The unanimous agreement was to let 
them fight until one or the other gave up, and in the 
meantime the fiercely-palpitating heart of the girl most 
interested was using almost the last bit of energy in her 
body. She remained for sometime an unwilling spec¬ 
tator, asking again and again why in God’s name they 
allowed such brutality to continue, and why didn’t some¬ 
one get the constable. She heard them breathe like brok¬ 
en bellows, and leap, fall, plunge, singly and together. 

Indistinctly she occasionally got a glimpse of Morris 
when the line before her moved to better advantage, and 
could still discern that all his efforts were defensive. His 
whole aim seemed to center on keeping Farley from get¬ 
ting hold of the arm he could use, and to that end when 
occasion offered hurled the big miner like a log to the 
ground. But unlike a log Farley rebounded and went at 
it again, aiming blow and kick, and, sometimes it seemed, 
doing both simultaneously so close were they together. 
He was completely sober now. 

And thus they struggled, for an interminable period it 
seemed to the almost swooning woman looking on. Their 


98 


In The Carbon Hills 


breath coughed in their throats, the rancor in each man’s 
heart now out of all proportion to the original cause. 
Both were savages now and having only the instinct of 
self-preservation. 

In the end the sight became unendurable for Miss 
Wilkes, and with desperate effort she sought the pavilion 
for someone she knew. Margaret was there weeping, 
and on the other side Rummel sat sullenly wiping blood 
from a gash in his forehead. And while out of a broad 
sympathy for all suffering Elizabeth pitied him, too, the 
matter at the road adjusted itself in a sudden shock 
Farley received in one of his falls, and the chance of a 
second between falling and rising being taken. Like a 
tiger Morris pounced: his unhurt hand tightening on the 
other’s neck. 

Thus they were when an old man and a big hound 
forced their way through the crowd. Evidently the man 
was of some authority, as witness the great coat bristling 
with brass buttons, and a sawed-off musket of terrible 
aspect and mild efficiency, and the rusty handcuffs to do 
their part. Collson’s speed was slower in reaching the 
point of action than his courage, which in so aged a man 
was great. Also he had somehow misplaced his old- 
fashioned revolver, which caused some delay. He com¬ 
promised on the weapon aforesaid and the dog, the latter 
the more deadly in a scrimmage. 

The ensemble was sufficient in looks alone to quell the 
incipient riot his informant had led him to believe ex¬ 
isted in the grove. But Collson had been peace officer 
too long in Carbonia to take needless chances. He did 
lay the musket on the ground, but he put the “nippers” 
on Farley, relieving Morris and Pete of taking immedi¬ 
ate care of him. The old dog, whose fearful howls were 
said to indicate part blood-hound, was always an efficient 
aide in such matters, even moreso than the “bored out” 
old musket or the wonderful cap-revolver that stood still 


In The Carbon Hills 


99 


when it should have turned and revolved when it should 
have stood still. The gun he had brought was loaded 
with sparrow-shot, but it was capless, and the cap-box 
he himself had hidden to forestall Bobbie Burns in his 
frequent surreptitious visits to the batch. In his hurry 
he had forgotten the cap, but the effect was just as good. 

The constable shouted to a man who had left the group 
and started toward the platform. “Come along wi’ me, 
Eldred,” he urged as the crowd fell back, murmuring be¬ 
cause the free show was over and the dance broken up. 
Most of the young women had gone home. “This young 
buck might be too much for me further on.” 

Morris went reluctantly. He glanced around vainly 
for the girl he had seen beside the tree, and assumed she, 
too, had gone home. Then he turned to aid Collson. 

Many others went along, mostly boys, one of them, 
because of relationship, clutching the constable’s coat 
as the procession moved down the road. On his right 
Pete padded solemnly, receiving an occasional twist on 
his long ears. Bobbie Burns enjoyed hearing the assist¬ 
ant policeman howl. 

They turned in an opposite direction from the village. 
The last prisoner Collson had locked in Maloney’s horse- 
stable, and by virtue of past performances at the saloon- 
bar he had, as our untutored village youth termed it, 
“skipped.” It was an “accident” of course. Collson for¬ 
got to fasten the hay-loft door. 

“Where you goin’ ter put him, Uncle Enoch?” piped 
Bobbie Burns; “you ain’t got no jail—n-e-o-w!” 

“Squire Tirrel has one good ernuff till to-morrer,” the 
constable replied, quite undisturbed by the prospect. 

“Oh, the barn?” prompted the freckled Bobbie, drop¬ 
ping back with Collson, who found it hard to keep up 
with Morris and his prisoner. Farley’s hands were fast¬ 
ened on himself alone, his manner sullen, his tongue 
silent. His recent antagonist evidently depended on his 


IOO 


In The Carbon Hills 


legs to catch him if he broke away. In more desperate 
cases Collson had been known to fasten his own coal- 
scarred wrist to his much more burly prisoners, and walk 
thus to the standard calaboose at Colville. 

“The barn, Uncle Enoch?’’ persisted Bobbie again, 
hotching nervously in mingled curiosity and desire to be 
near the head of the procession at the same time. Coll¬ 
son stopped to fill his pipe before answering: 

“No, laddie, that ain’t safe-keepin’; but Tirrel’s old 
silo is." 

And into the village Squire’s small abandoned silo went 
the prisoner that night sober. They removed him some¬ 
time next day more intoxicated than he had been the 
night before. Pools of fermented ancient green-corn- 
juice had confounded The Law in this premise. 


CHAPTER XIII. 

A KISS FOR NELLIE BUT NONE FOR PETE 

Next morning Eldred Morris donned his working 
clothes and prepared to go over to the mine. He felt 
sore all over, but not otherwise much worse for the 
fracas at the grove. It was Sunday, but the possibilities 
of the night demanded that he pay a visit if only for a 
few minutes. Pumps broke, fans stopped, something 
went wrong in the engine-rooms or the shaft, sometimes. 
And of a certainty there was, at such a mine as The Bffie, 
always men to be set at certain work that could not well 
be done through the week. 

He had risen last, and Emily Morris placed before him 
and Tom a substantial breakfast of fried potatoes, beef¬ 
steak and gravy, poached eggs and rolled oats with milk, 
not to mention the completion of the menu in the form of 
bananas, bread and coffee. Our men live well while they 
can, starve when they must. Their work demands much 
body-fuel, and when possible they get it. 

“How’s your arm, my boy?” his mother asked so¬ 
licitously, placing beside his chair a pair of knee-high, 
tan-colored-leather shoes, having heavy soles and raw- 
hide laces, and over the chair-back a heavy blue flannel 
shirt having on it plenty of grease and clay-stains as 
well as a collar. The sleeves were purposely shorn at 
the elbows to give a greater freedom of movement. 

“Oh, it’s better this morning, mother,” Eldred replied, 
bolting almost a complete egg at one mouthful. Tom 
was doing likewise but saying nothing. The younger son 
looked decidedly depressed this morning. “That witch- 
hazel you put on helped it some.” 

IOI 


102 


In The Carbon Hills 


For some time no one spoke further. Both men ate 
rapidly, their mother slowly. They were almost through 
before she was well started. John Morris came into the 
room and Eldred rose, pushing forward his chair. 

“Here’s a chair, dad,” he said; “I’m through.” 

John Morris usually took a constitutional around The 
Four Rows as a prelude to breakfast on Sunday morning. 
He was generally first up. Taking the chair vacated by 
his son he sat down as he said quite casually: 

“Eldred, I heard up the blocks Rossi died at three 
o’clock this mornin’.” He gave this information merely 
as a matter of course, and without raising or lowering 
his voice or turning from his plate. 

Emily Morris turned from the stove where she had 
gone to get the coffee-pot. She had stirred the coals 
first, and the lifter was still in her hand. All color left 
her cheeks as she went over to the wall and sat down. 
News of death at the mine somehow always presaged in 
her mind the same fate ultimately for her own. 

“Poor Mrs. Rossi and all those children,” she said, 
looking through the open door toward the most recently 
built row of houses, in one of which Mrs. Rossi lived. 
The “cousins” of our Dominies and Tonis were, with 
their families, now numerous enough to fill “dago row.” 
“What’ll they do now, I wonder,” she questioned as she 
had always done in the great sympathy of a greater all¬ 
mothering heart for all the multitudinous suffering 
women and children of this tragic industry. None of the 
men answered while Mrs. Morris busied her agitated 
hands in re-arranging the contents of a basket she had, 
at her eldest son’s instigation, prepared to send over to 
the widowed woman. Mrs. Rossi was in a delicate situ¬ 
ation ; the crisis was expected at any moment, and, when 
the news came that her husband was injured and sent 
to the hospital, Emily Morris and Eldred had formed a 
committee of two to extend a little practical sympathy in 


In The Carbon Hills 


103 


the form of certain delicacies and little dresses Emily 
Morris would never need again, and Mrs. Rossi would 
very soon, apparently. She placed a white towel over 
it as Eldred spoke: 

“I thought he wouldn’t last to get there,” said he, filling 
his Sunday meerschaum preparatory for a smoke while 
crossing the fields. ‘‘His chest was caved in completely 
when I got to him.” 

Tom was standing by the door, legs crossed, eyes di¬ 
rected toward MacDonald’s porch. 

“Before long the union’ll have compensation to care for 
all them cases, Emmy,” John Morris ofifered as a dilatory 
answer to her question. Eldred turned at the door. 

“Not until Public Opinion is roused sufficiently, dad,” 
he differed. “It’ll have to come through the Legislature, 
when it does come, and the union is too busy unionizing 
to bother with politics much. They’d gain that point and 
many another that seems to trouble them much sooner, 
I fancy, if they’d use the same effort to lay the matter in 
all its detail before the people by writing to newspapers 
and their representatives in Harrisburg that they use in 
cussin’ the operators. The Public don’t wont injustice to 
continue toward the workmen let alone helpless little 
children and women, dad, any more than the union does,” 
he concluded rather vehemently, meanwhile slipping 
something into his mother’s hand. 

Emily Morris looked at it, then, surprised, asked: “All 
of this, Eldred?” 

He nodded. “They’ll need it and a lot more to bury 
him,” he replied laconically, “or the County will.” 

Tom walked with him some distance, then turned to¬ 
ward MacDonald’s. The foreman went on alone past 
Collson’s. The blinds were not down, for there were 
none, but evidently the three occupants were asleep. 
Peace-preserver and Peace-disturber were equally ob¬ 
livious to the cares of Carbonia. Collson in his own mussy 


104 


In The Carbon Hills 


bed and Farley drunker than ever in Tirrel’s empty silo. 
Noting this Morris turned abruptly into a path leading 
through a meadow and thence through a coppice. 

It was a lovely morning, just such as one sees some¬ 
times in our coal country, every breath fragrant with the 
perfume of early Autumn leaf and flower, of fern and 
swinging wild-grape vine. The frosts were not yet come. 
Here and there Eldred Morris’s heavy mine shoes crushed 
ripened may-apples edging the path as, passing from 
shadow to shadow the great arc-light of the heavens 
threw alternating radiance across the miner’s way. 

To make the traveling easier the mine employees on 
their way to work had broken and cut at projecting twigs 
until the passage literally formed a leafy tunnel. Yet 
even then when a group went together beneath this ver¬ 
nal vault the traveling—in the case of the miners—was 
apt to be accompanied by much profanity as twig after 
twig, still unbroken, bent back from the person in front 
and sharply slapped the one in the rear. 

But Eldred Morris was alone. The morning smoke of 
the village lay quite some distance behind him in the 
slight valley, and he was near Wilkes’s. Perhaps uncon¬ 
sciously, perhaps purposely, he had chosen this path, al¬ 
though somewhat the longest from Morris’s, to reach 
the mine. By passing that way he might have hoped to 
see Elizabeth, and, be his intent what it may, he did. 

Near the end of the coppice they came face to face. 
To escape the dew the girl, all unconscious of any male’s 
presence, held her skirt and petticoat well toward her 
knees, with one hand clutching them in front. In the 
other she carried a large basket filled with something 
Eldred could only guess at. 

Perhaps there is such a thing as physic love-waves; 
perhaps it was because Elizabeth was young; perhaps a 
little of all mixed with the aroma of wood and field, and 
scarcely a real care in all the world, that wreathed the 


In The Carbon Hills 


105 

rosy cheeks and still rosier lips with smiles; perhaps the 
spiritual warmth—the heavenly glow—that lights both 
soul and features over the contemplation of being on a 
mission of mercy to the unfortunate and suffering. Be 
that as it may the soul of the young woman on that beau¬ 
tiful late-summer morning was illumed, and the reflection 
showed in the red lips parted with a smile, when the blue 
eyes startled at the sudden proximity of the dark ones. 

“You, Eldred!” she exclaimed, dropping her skirts and 
blushing furiously. 

“You’re out early?” he questioned. 

“I want to take this to Mrs. - what is it?” ad¬ 

dressing the question to herself, and, following Morris’s 
action, sat on a fallen tree trunk lying parallel with 
the path. Her basket she set between them. The young 
man helped her out. 

“Mrs. Rossi,” he suggested, “whose man was killed 
yesterday?” knocking the ashes from his pipe and put¬ 
ting it in a velvet-lined case. If Morris had one extrava¬ 
gance it was this, although obviously smoking was con¬ 
fined to the surface. 

“Yes,” Elizabeth responded, “but we didn’t know he 
was killed. Papa heard at the mine he was merely in¬ 
jured and taken to the hospital.” 

The young foreman looked stolidly at the ground. “He 
was; he died this morning in Pittsburg. I sent him 
there—about the time I should have been cleaned up 
and at your place,” he added meaningly, looking at the 
coloring face of the girl. Elizabeth’s eyes dropped. “I 
knew he couldn’t live—or rather I thought he couldn't— 
when I helped remove him from beneath the slate, but 
there’s always a possibility of such cases living, you 
know, if they can be gotten to the hospital in time. 
Some day there’ll be scores of lives saved, that are now 
lost, by having means of treating them right close.”* 

*Later events have fully justified Eldred Morris’s assertion: 
see reports of First-Aid Corps. 




io6 


In The Carbon Hills 


“But yourself, Eldred?” she interrupted irrelevantly, 
looking down at his hand which bore no sign of injury. 

He cast all inquiry aside by a sullen: “Oh, I’m alright, 
only a little sore.” Where or why he failed to specify, 
for the last word of his sentence has a psychological as 
well as physical definition in Carbonia’s colloquialism. 
“The mine seems to be hoodooed lately,” he added, re¬ 
verting to the subject which had crowded out almost ev¬ 
ery other thought since the conversation at home, “but 
it’s not any different than I might have expected.” 

Elizabeth pulled apart the fronds of a fern brushing her 
dress, while Morris pulled out a watch, opened it, and put 
it back without being any wiser as to the time. Appar¬ 
ently the girl was in no hurry. She spoke quietly, slow¬ 
ly, her eyes interrogating his own. 

“Idealism dies hard, doesn't it, Eldred?” the blue eyes 
smiled into the dark ones understandingly. 

Morris nodded thoughtfully as he set the basket on 
the path and moved over somewhat, simply of course to 
escape a direct sunbeam that had found his face and 
missed Elizabeth's in its passage through the green, flut¬ 
tering, leaves. 

“I’ve had more than one ideal smashed lately.” Then, 
without lifting his head to remark the effect of that as¬ 
sertion, he added: “But a man raised in the mine ought 
to know that no foreman’s care will avoid all accidents. 
Coal mining’s a pretty harsh proposition anywhere; 
worse where there’s gas, coal-dust and slate as here— 
harder on the women and children, though, than the 
men,” he again repeated in substance the conversation 
at home. 

“But it mustn’t be any worse than it is if we can help 
it,” Elizabeth voiced her opinion optimistically, as is 
ever the way of unsophisticated Youth in any premise. 
She bent to move out of the sun’s rays. 

“We can’t, only temporarily,” he said, “under present 


In The Carbon Hills 


107 

conditions,” and spoke no more, for Elizabeth switched 
the conversation to another channel. She spoke of the 
affair at the dance, but avoided mention of why she was 
there with another, and the man, grasping the embarrass¬ 
ment, humored her secret. He told her where he and 
Collson had taken Farley, and, while avoiding mention 
of Rummel directly, he upset his own equipoise and 
grated on the girl’s sensibilities by telling briefly, but in 
such wise, Collson’s story of the dogs, that she sensed 
the point he desired to carry. 

Not at first, however, for Elizabeth laughed quietly as 
he repeated the story, but grew suspiciously serious 
when he iterated Collson’s assertion that “Some humans 
weren't any better than dogs in that respect.” When he 
hurried on to the old miner’s suggestion that he get mud- 
balls for artillery against the little dog, and rocks for the 
big one, the good humor had returned and the girl’s eyes 
were as one crying, and her hands held her sides. Doubt¬ 
less her acute imagination filled in all the detail neces¬ 
sary to complete the picture, while the man telling it 
saw only what lay before him and Collson’s words. 

“Droll old lampman,” she said, “and still droller Eld- 
red,” looking deep into eyes she had not yet understood. 
Nor was she yet to understand. His next words set her 
back. 

“Not droll,” he differed; “I would say para- what 

is it?” 

“Parabolic,” she added readily, looking at him doubt¬ 
fully, beginning to wonder if he would have the temerity 
to go further. It seemed he would, doing so not as she 
understood : to question her actions: but rather to direct 
them to what she might have found a better way. He 
loved her sweet face and winsome, if variant, disposition 
too well to let a trifling convention stand in the way, 
and, in a certain sense, was prepared to stand the conse¬ 
quences. His daily life, as is that of all good mine of- 



io8 


In The Carbon Hills 


ficials, young or old, is made up of suggestion for bet¬ 
terment, and command having the same purpose, only 
that there he dealt with nearly three hundred men and 
here with a single representative of the other sex. He 
had not learned that one woman is sometimes harder to 
control than a thousand men. If his men failed to heed 
his command, or contemptuously ignored his suggestion, 
out with them! Through Chaos to Method ran a path 
more or less clear to discerning eyes, and his eyes were 
perhaps of any in our midst the better fitted to this pur¬ 
pose, else he would not at that age have been what he 
was. If disobedience or stubbornness proved a stumbling 
block in that path remove it. That was the way of the 
mine. It was his way now. 

Generally speaking the mine foreman is a poor dis¬ 
sembler, and Eldred Morris showed perhaps too plainly 
that his love for Elizabeth ran deep as all such men’s 
passions do. The girl now sitting very close to him 
had never sounded its full depth, and just when she might 
have done so he said what he said and changed it all. 
Her face grew a shade whiter than her dress. Elizabeth 
knew well enough now what he meant, but for some rea¬ 
son preferred that he should bare his mind more com¬ 
pletely. 

Her fingers moved over the now bare fern stem as she 
said tremulously: “I don’t—I don't quite understand 
you,” freezing in her conscious dignity. But adamant 
does not freeze. 

Eldred Morris had chosen the way deliberately. “I 
didn’t tell the story because of its funniness.” 

She replied tartly: “So you said,” but her face was 
averted and her voice quavered. “I beg your pardon for 
misunderstanding you, and thank you ever so much for 
your good intentions, Mr. Morris.” But the acrimony 
put into the last sentence killed any hope that might have 



In The Carbon Hills 109 

lingered in the young man’s mind that his suggestion 
would meet with a modicum of approval in that quarter. 

To make amends he quickly caught her hands and held 
them awhile despite her struggles, but, finding her de¬ 
termined to resist any effort at conciliation he loosed 
them and stood up beside her, his hands in his blouse 
pockets, hers in her lap, his eyes on the mass of hair 
blown gently by the warm wind. The eyes of the girl 
were set on a bouquet of asters which a movement of 
the napkin disclosed at her feet. 

For a moment neither broke the silence. On a bough 
nearby a coy canary warbled, and the distant whirr of the 
steel fan-blades above The Bffie drooned like a bee-swarm 
humming. The woman’s head was bent slightly forward, 
showing a skin white and pink, and a wealth of hair 
above it starting like yellow down and ending in a mound 
of glistening threads like gold in the shimmering sun¬ 
light. To the man’s nostrils came the faintest hint of 
redolence like the breath of a full-blown tuberose weak¬ 
ened appreciably by the passing breeze. 

As it had not beat when fastened in a living tomb with 
miners dead and near dead the heart of the man ran riot, 
and forced from his lips words he had not thought him¬ 
self capable of uttering in supplication for the favor of 
any earthly being. And when he had thus bared his 
heart the best of the girl wanted to look up and smile 
into his eyes with full forgiveness and appreciation, but 
she did that which conflicted with her desire instead. 

“I didn’t stop here, Mr. Morris, to have you find fault 
with my actions. I thought- 

“Then, perhaps, you won’t find fault with mine,’ 1 he 
said rapidly, and as quickly bent and kissed her on her 
cheek, then her lips, before the blows aimed at him 
made him desist. “I’m going to be hanged,” he smiled 
defiantly at her, she standing now in the center of the 
path, her blue eyes unflinching, her cheeks, where she 



110 


In The Carbon Hills 


dabbed at them with a handkerchief, red as the lips she 
did not dab at all, and he unmoved as yet, “and it might 
as well be for the hound as for the tail alone,” following 
which he good-naturedly added to the measure before she 
could grasp the basket and move, for he had purposely 
stood before it. 

“If you do that again,” she said, “I’ll—I’ll—shriek 

yy 

• • • 

“Don’t,” he whispered, going still a little nearer, and 
she as certainly moving back, “don’t. It’s not lady-like 
on—Sunday.” 

“You’re a brute,” she flung back, and still good-natur¬ 
edly he told her nay: that the dogs obviously were, and 
as he had as yet kissed only for poor Nellie he would be 
pleased also to kiss for Pete. 

Instead he moved forward toward the way he was 
heading when he met her, seeing that she was intensely 
earnest and really mad about it—now. All the softness 
he had felt when he thought her actions just a bit of 
girlish by-play vanished, and his face took on the color 
of hers and his lips set, but there was a light deep in his 
eyes that burned too fiercely to be put out entirely by a 
passing breeze. Yet she, determined it should go out, 
blew deliberately on it as she lifted her basket and 
turned in the opposite direction, yet looking at the 
ground as she said: , 

“Your attentions, Mr. Morris, will be better confined 
to Margaret Thomas or some girl in The Rows in future. 
It would be more appropriate to the setting.” This she 
said slowly, with enunciation on each word, knowing 
full well its hurtful meaning and implication that circum¬ 
stances were not now the same as when they were both 
miners’ children. “Perhaps she’ll take that from you, 
I won’t!” 

And thus fully weighing the girl’s reference to an act 
of kindness she had evidently nursed into sinister mean- 


In The Carbon Hills 


hi 


ing, and also to an artificially-created social abyss which 
money and position ultimately create, even in mining 
life, between friends starting on a common level, Eldred 
Morris’s lips moved in inarticulate chagrin and mortifica¬ 
tion. Evidently Elizabeth was now the calmer of the 
two, and found it possible to widen the wound she had 
already made. She was in that feminine frame of mind 
when the tongue utters the crudest words to that one 
of all the world most dear. She wanted him to speak 
again and give her time to regain her normal attitude, 
and then to turn back and put his strong arms around 
her and drive all the anger away, and she did not want 
to say what she said and yet malevolently it followed the 
man moving along the path. 

“I’ll send you a note, Mr. Morris, when I desire your 
company again . . And he, with one sentence 

building a wall he did not want between them, retorted 
prophetically: 

“You’ll bring it as well as write it, Elizabeth, before 
we meet again,” which she of course said would never, 
never be—now that he had thus chosen to go away. 

Then he went on and she did not even condescend to 
turn to see which way he took. He might have gone to 
the mine or the suggested female charmers in The Rows 
for all she knew—or cared, which was fully evidenced 
when for the full distance to the home of the dead miner 
she tried in vain to stem her tears. Elizabeth’s face was 
suffused and her eyes wet when she reached Mrs. Rossi’s. 


CHAPTER XIV. 


IN WHICH FATHER AND SON AGREE 

Sometime after the incident in the coppice the fore¬ 
man of The Bffie was, by virtue of his official position, 
prerogatived to do that which gave him the most pleas¬ 
ure of anything recently undertaken at the mine. John 
Morris was to get a new place, and his son determined 
to do his best to kill two birds with one stone, so to 
speak, by seeing that the new place should be so much 
better than the old that it would lend an additional in¬ 
ducement to John Morris to let up on his agitating. 
Thus does the mental uplift of night-study in our chief- 
est university of mining in the end tend to help finan¬ 
cially and otherwise others besides the assiduous student 
himself. Blood is thicker than water even among us, 
and Eldred Morris had two duties to fulfill that day: 
one to his employer and one to his parent. 

Usually he deputed this service to his firebosses, of 
whom there were several now, men older than he, and 
having families, but like many others not yet possessed 
of the technical knowledge necessary to gain the higher 
certificate and the higher pay. This chamber he must 
see himself, and with John Morris he went thither in an 
empty coal car. One of the essentials of this place he 
desired should be the possibility of working there with 
open light. The faint glimmer of a safety lamp as com¬ 
pared with a “naked light”—or oil torch—bears about 
the same ratio in comfort as a candle to an electric bulb. 

He found it quite as good as MacDonald had said, coal 


112 


In The Carbon Hills 113 

thick, floor dry and slate thin. It was on the same circuit 
as the “free turn” entries, but unlike them was free of 
gas transpiration. Having looked it over carefully 
Eldred Morris sat down on a heap of fine slack left by 
the former workman. John Morris busied himself with 
his tools. 

“There’s only one bad thing about this place, and 
many another in The Bffie, dad,” the younger man said as 
he held up his testing lamp. His father looked through 
the semi-dark, wondering. He had seen no bad points. 
“It's less than five hundred yards from Number Ten and 
that entry is full of gas, and on the same air.” 

The miner laughed incredulously. 

“There’ll be no open lights in gas mines after a few 
more explosions waken the people up,” the idealist 
theorized. 

“Tut, tut, boy,” John Morris assured, “don’t let that 
worry you. There’s lots o’ things you need to worry 
about—an’ me—” he added meaningly, and looking 
closely at Eldred, “as is more likely to happen than yer 
dad to be killed-here.” But evidently the possibil¬ 

ities, remote as he conceived them to be, suggested care 
in another direction. He lifted his pick and tapped gently 
on the roof above him, while with his other hand he held 
the naked light. This precaution frequently occurs to the 
miner after he has been sitting under possibly instan¬ 
taneous death for some time, if the roof doesn’t notify 
him of his carelessness first. 

“But I do care,” persisted the foreman, “although as it 
is at present I’m powerless to change it without a strike 
right off the bat—men and company both. And as long 
as other mines nearby are being worked that way, and 
this being about the best place in the pit, I don’t know 
that you’ll be in any worse danger than elsewhere where 
it isn’t as good.” 

John Morris sat on the pit-post he had found for a 



In The Carbon Hills 


114 

seat. The opportunity to “roast” the company a bit was 
too good to pass unnoticed. “True enough, sonny, true 
enough; but as long as the company finds it to their ad¬ 
vantage to let the drivers an’ day-men use open lights 
because they can get more work done in a shift, the dig¬ 
gers is bound to feel the same way as works by the ton, 
an’ if anythin’ happens the pot can’t call the kettle black, 
even if the fat, as represented by the children an’ wim- 
men folks, does tumble into the fire in the squabble.” 

“There’s truth in that,” the foreman lifted his heavy 
lamp from the floor and concentrated his gaze on it, 
“and it’s because the innocent have to suffer more than 
the guilty, and because the ‘doctors’ nearly always dis¬ 
agree as to the cause, and on whom to place the respon¬ 
sibility, that I say the causes should be removed when 
they’re known before it does happen. If I had my way 
there’d be no open lights used either by the company 
men or the diggers, where there are entries like Number 
Ten and Eleven throwing enough gas into the air to 
come dangerously near the popping stage in a Davy, 
as I found it on this circuit the very day Pietrecco and 
Strafford and the rest of them were killed. I’ve often 
wondered—since the inspectors all seemed to disagree as 
to the starting point—if that wasn’t the cause of that 
blow-up. And still,” after a moment’s thought, the fore¬ 
man resumed, “I don’t see how it could be, either, for I 
made Pietrecco carry a safety lamp that morning, because 
we had to go round where there was gas before I showed 
him an open-light rib in Old 13 . It’s a-.” 

Foreman Morris ceased soliloquizing to look at his 
father who was roaring with laughter. “Eldred ! Eldred !” 
he chuckled, “did—you—look—in—all—his—pockets?” 

“That’s so,” the foreman hung his head in thought 
more than shame, “giving a man a safety lamp in his 
hand don’t avail much if he’s carrying open lights on 
sticks in his pockets, does it? Penning the pig up on 



In The Carbon Hills 


"5 

one side only isn’t going to keep him in if he’s bound 
to find trouble, I guess/’ 

In the heading behind them a train of cars rumbled 
along, the driver’s cap, cocked aslant over one ear of the 
devil-may-care youth driving the mule, bearing a torch 
with a murky half-kerosene-half-miner’s-oil flame half 
a foot high. In the open spaces to the right and left the 
echoes of the rumbling train mingled with the fluent 
strain of a lip-pursed whistle, and an occasional unprint¬ 
able admonishment to the mule to move faster. As the 
noise died away in the dark distance John Morris rose 
to get a drink of cold, unsugared, tea from his pail, and, 
setting the top back, wiped his lips and moustache with 
the back of a hairy, coal-dust-covered hand. He referred 
to the previous conversation: 

“Men ain’t the only ones in that respect, Eldred,” 
switching the matter to that seldom discussed at home. 
“If a man or a woman’s a cripple above their shoulders 
after twenty or twenty-five it’s a pritty hard place to 
make crutches to fit.” 

For a moment Eldred Morris’s thoughts were else¬ 
where. He caught but a vague impression of his father’s 
meaning, and at first thought the allusion to his mother’s 
having worried herself ill. Emily Morris had taken to 
her bed that morning. Then it flashed across his mind 
that the scene in the coppice might have somehow reach¬ 
ed his parents, despite the fact that he had said nothing 
about it. And for a while neither man spoke—the young¬ 
er looking questioningly at the elder before John Morris 
explained: 

“I was thinkin’ of the trouble your brother’s goin’ to 

bring on your mother an’ me unless-” he turned the 

trend suddenly. “You p’rhaps don’t know as your 
mother an’ Esther’s mother was well acquainted when 
they was young wimmen, an’ that Aholah Collson, she 
was named then, didn’t have the best of reppitations?” 



116 In The Carbon Hills 

“Well, dad, what has that to do with Esther?” came 
sharply. 

“Nothin’,” was the equally sharp reply, “only as the 
bad points is sometimes handed on as well as the good 
uns, an’ the man as had, in the end, to dig coal to keep 
Esther wasn’t her daddy accordin’ to all accounts.” 

“Well, what Esther’s mother did has nothing to do 
with Tom—nor us.” 

“No, but what the girl’s doin’ herself has.” 

Still baffled by his parent’s equivocal assertions Eldred 
remained silent, not caring to ask more questions until 
sure of his ground. His own manliness and a strong re¬ 
luctance to discuss the private affairs of others had im¬ 
pelled him to refuse to accept as fact all he had heard 
lately, but he had never known his father to take hearsay 
as truth until proven in such matters, despite his exag¬ 
gerations as an incorrigible unionizer, nor yet to take 
verity at par and retail it at a profit. He was first to 
break the heavy silence, however. 

“Are you sure, dad, it isn’t mother’s reluctance she’s 
always shown regarding Tom going with Esther, or me, 
for that matter with—that is,” the foreman colored a little 
beneath the coal-dust—“her reluctance to lose us to some 
other woman that started this?” 

“Yes, my boy, I’m sure it ain’t,” his father replied, 
ambiguous still, rubbing his fingers along the spout of 
his lamp until it glistened like silver, “although it’s nat¬ 
ural for your mother to feel that way even if the young 
woman was a angel from heaven, which none of ’em don’t 
happen to be by a few miles, more or less, only when 
they’n courtin’ and’ afraid they might lose the feller,” the 
miner chuckled. “They all feelin’ that way at first—at 
least my mother did towards yours. But what we see 
we see, an’ to put it plain, Eldred, I know enough to 
make me, let alone your mother, wish it was different. 
Rummei should either marry Lizzie Wilkes, as I heard 


In The Carbon Hills 


ii 7 

yesterday he’s goin’ to, an’ leave Esther alone, or-.” 

John Morris stopped suddenly in his explanation to 
pick up the lighted testing-lamp which had slipped from 
his son’s fingers. He could not see the change of color, 
but he possibly remarked the tremor in the fingers which 
took the lamp out of his own. The foreman hooked it in 
his belt for fear of making a fool of himself a second 
time. The momentary loss of mental control was as 
mortifying as it was unusual to one accustomed now to 
the weightier things of life—affairs involving the future 
of thousands, the lives of hundreds, including himself and 
the men of his own family. 

“I can believe what I know, Eldred, boy, an’ I know 
more than I like as the father of the man as might have 
to daddy her young un . . .” 

The miner spoke with the characteristic frankness of 
his class, calling spade a spade. “But if there’s nothin’ 
been done as—as there oughtn’t, your mother nor me 
would have no objection to Esther if she keeps away from 
Rummel in future, for I’m sure I don’t know a girl as 
I like better only for—well—monkeyin’ with buzz-saws 
once in a while we might say,” John Morris chuckled 
with a knowing glance at his son. “They all seemin’ to 
like to try their hand at that, though, when her age.” 

“That’s no joke either, dad,” Eldred Morris replied, 
his eyes set on the little light-cone burning brightly in 
the center of the black circle of wire protecting it, as 
though its tiny flame illumed pictures his own mind 
conjured of a certain girl he knew who played with the 
whirling blade. “From what I see there seems to be a 
bit of the devil in all women—even the best of them—” 
he qualified his definition in the specific, and the reader 
may do the same. Eldred Morris had no doubt at all. 

Certain it is the two men’s minds in that underground 
chamber differed only as to objects, the elder recalling 
the boys’ mother and some scraps of conversation the 



118 In The Carbon Hills 

night before, in which the great heart of Emily Morris 
was torn between her duty as a Christian toward a poor 
and more or less defenseless orphan girl, and her duty 
as that same girl’s prospective and probable mother-in- 
law. 

“I reckon there is, Eldred,” the miner replied thought¬ 
fully, “I reckon there is; but from what I’ve seen of a 
good many of ’em, an’ your mother in particular, there’s 
also a good bit more of The Christ-Spirit in ’em than 
in us men to make it out.” 

Here for that day at least the matter ended, and Eldred 
Morris went on into the farther mine, trying, with more 
or less success, to forget what he had heard. Generally 
the full-grown men—at their height physically and men¬ 
tally—who worship at The Carbon Shrine, take labor the 
more seriously, the mating affair monogamously and as 
a matter of recreation rather than vocation of a poly¬ 
gamous sort. Necessarily this is a matter strictly of 
circumstance and environment, of course. Fortunate, 
too, else not here and there a swinging crepe, a distorted 
face, but all—in every home greater chances for one to 
a dozen dead with all the temporary and permanent ac¬ 
companiments of poverty and anguished minds. Neces¬ 
sarily this is so, else Foreman Morris, Fireboss MacDon¬ 
ald and his contemporaries of the lamp and fiddle, were 
unfitted to hold each in his hand a hundred lives. 

Also we augment it by admitting no man to hold such 
position until he shall have passed the moon-struck stage 
of his career.* By the time a miner reach midway to 
thirty, the years between twenty and twenty-four or five 
have, with the more serious aspects of our life, refined 


*As evidence that our laws are not always based on a de¬ 
termination to be progressive the Author desires to state that in 
Pennsylvania that most beneficent statute has been revoked. The 
employer may now designate whom he will for these positions 
regardless of his age or qualifications. 



In The Carbon Hills 


119 

him of much of Youth's inherent farcical traits. And 
for the other sex which shares that life we may add, that, 
speaking generally, when exotic bloom comes on our 
plant of love “working out" in town is oftener than not 
at fault. Even as The Greater Light but soothes and 
gives being to the flitting moth, so does the Artificial 
Imitation lure it to destruction and turn its gold and 
silver sheen to charring dust. So did it prove for one 
of our fairest girls at least. 


CHAPTER XV. 


THE MEETING IN BILKIN’S HALL 

The Effie was in full swing when one morning the fol¬ 
lowing notice, posted where all the miners could see it 
before entering the cage, broke what promised to be a 
record run of good luck—or good management. Said the 
paper: 

Gentlemen Your presens are neaded to 
settel something of speshul importense to 
this mine at a meeting to be held at Bill 
Kins hall today at 2 p M promp. 

Sined Speshul Commity. 

The attendance was more obvious; the concurrence of 
opinion more lucid. They came, in tens and twenties, 
until the hall would hold no more. The rest waited more 
or less patiently outside. 

Evidently the decision was already reached: the meet¬ 
ing a mere formality of setting it on record and getting 
concerted action. Anent this, however, each man was in 
doubt regarding the whole, hence the subdued and louder 
whisperings hushed immediately on the appearance on 
the platform of John Morris, Enoch Collson, and several 
others of importance in our circle. 

Enoch Collson stood up enwrapped in the faded coat 
with unfaded brass buttons which had long ceased to 
create curiosity or comment, in his hand a red bandanna, 
large almost as a small table-cloth. 

“Our Local President,” said he, “asks as he be ex¬ 
cused from sittin’ as cheerman of this meetin’ as usual, 


120 


In The Carbon Hills 


121 


bein’ it has, as you all know, somethin’ to do with a per- 
tic’ler member of his fam’ly.” 

This request was granted and followed by a wave of 
whispered opinion starting at the platform and ending at 
the door. Mickey Gawan stood up and suggested that 
all in favor of Mr. Collson taking John Morris’s place 
would “sinnify by sayin’ Hi!” Enoch Collson was unan¬ 
imously elected, and chose to make known his desire as 
follows: 

“Will Mr. Gawan, Jim Darrel, an’ Duck Farley, step 
up here?” They stepped, Darrel clumsily, Gawan slowly, 
and the former mule-beater with the ability of an acro¬ 
bat, and all embarrassed. Certain information conveyed 
to Eldred Morris regarding the prospective marriage of 
his late antagonist to Miss Thomas had caused him to 
relent. He had given him the job of firing the boilers for 
Darrel, thus relieving him of inhuman opportunity, even 
as it was reported the winsome Margaret had won him 
from drink. All three were equally miserable. Micky 
pulled an indiscriminate moustache almost out by root; 
Darrel wiped his fat and inordinately sweaty face to a 
polish, and Farley nearly tore away the brim of a soft 
hat. 

Collson had them all seated at length, and suggested 
that Darrel take the stand and tell the miners assembled 
what he knew about it. This Darrel proceeded to do. 

“I was sittin’ on the bench outside the engine-room 
when it happened,” testified The Bffie's day engine-man, 
“waitin’ for a trip to get to the bottom, when Mr. Rum- 
mel—the old gent from Colville—come up to me. 

“Sez he: ‘Youn the engineer?’ 

“ ‘That’s what they callin’ me when Old Polly’s run- 
nin’ good,’ sez I. ‘Me own mother wouldn’t own the 
name they callin’ me she don’t,’ sez I. 

“‘‘Old Polly,’’ sez he, kinder like a snappin’ turtle; 


I 22 


In The Carbon Hills 


‘I’m not interested in horses but I am in notes an’ profits 
to pay ’em.’ 

“ 'The enjine,’ I sez, 'to the primmer class.’ 

“ ‘Oh,’ he snapped like he’d break his teeth off, 'you’re 
Dan Smart, ain’t you?’ 

“‘No, sir,’ sez I, takin’ a chew, 'Dan lives in Row 3; I 
live in Row 1, an’ my name’s Jimmy Darrel,’ I laughed, 
an’ he mosied on, an’ the bell ringin’ I didn’t see him for 
a spell, an’ was too busy histin’ coal to bother with him 
even if I had.” 

The engine-man sat down and Collson called the fire¬ 
man. Said he: 

“Darrel’s told youns about him cornin’ inter the bilers, 
an’ he stood about five minutes, me shovelin’, before 
he spoke. 

“ ‘Me man,’ he says, squintin’ over them specks of his’n, 
'I’m lookin’ fer Mister Conomise,’ an’ pulls out a little 
book to see if he’s spelled the name right. 

“'Dutchman or dago?’ I asks, goin’ up closer, as Dar¬ 
rel was histin’ coal an’ I could hardly hear what he said. 

“ ‘‘Dutchman,’ ’ he squalls; ‘Yes, I reckon the ackshun 
the devil’s the matter with you men here as you don’t 
understand English. I thought you was Americans!’ 
laughin’ funny-like, by which I thought he’d got a storey 
to let or was drunk,’’ Farley continued to the evident 
amusement of his auditors. 

“ ' “Dutchman,” ’ he squalls; ‘Yes, I reckon the ackshun 
suits the word over there, not like this wasteful affair,’ 
which I takes to mean as this yere Conomise is a pop’lar 
gent in his own country.” 

“You meanin’ Meanster Conomise, don’t you, Farley?” 
the chairman suggested in the pause, during which the 
fireman looked at him quite seriously. 

“Sure,” he acquiesced, “I’m sure he didn’t ask for the 
Missis,” the fireman reddened and the miners roared, 
catching the point nicely. Coal Land harbors a sense of 


In The Carbon Hills 


123 


humor as well as fair-play. Collson settled back com¬ 
posedly, trusting 1 that the tale would unfold correctly 
despite the misunderstanding of names. “But which of 
the guinnies he wanted I didn’t know,” Farley persisted, 
“so says I, ‘I’d advise yer to see Young Morris, as he’s 
akquainted with all the pop'lar an’ unpop’lar dagoes at 
Calabrue’s an’ in their row. If there’s anybody round 
yere as’ll know yer man it’s him.’ ” 

“Did he?” interrogated a curious hobble-de-hoy well 
up toward the rostrum, and was immediately squelched 
by cries of “Silence!” Farley answered during the tur¬ 
moil : 

“This yere Colville man says not. He says . . .” 

“Speaker, speak louder, please!” a courteous gentleman 
in the back of the hall suggested, and the accomodating 
Farley bawled: 

“The — Colville — man — said — not; said — he’d — 
not — got — round — t’im — yit — but — frum — his 
— observashun — this — yere — Conomise — was — 
a — utter — stranger — to — the — foreman — an’ — 
the — whole — durned — plant.” 

At a word from the chairman Farley improved his 
pace. 

“ ‘Yer case is hopeless,’ thinks I, as I went to Battery 
A to fire an’ he follered me, an’ asked if we couldn’t rise 
steam as good by usin’ the ‘bug-dust’* as the foreman 
had made ’em send out after the blow-up, as he’d seen 
hills of it outside he says. 

“ ‘I don’t know about risin’ steam with it,’ says I, 
‘but I’ve heard as it’s good to raise hell an’ fill coffins, 
when it gits started, an’ to make dam fools ask ques- 


*The powdered coal inseparable from mining in dry, bitumin¬ 
ous veins; much more in evidence where machines undercut, but 
in The Pittsburgh District prevalent even where men mine by 
hand. Usually considered useless as fuel, and probably the most 
dangerous element in coal mining. 



124 


In The Carbon Hills 


tions,’ says I, gettin’ tired of his bother. I thought he 
was some bum as had come in to get warm an’ was 
drunk, maybe. Darrel told me after who he was. So he 
lef’ me alone after I told him to go in an’ ask Darrel, as 
he was longer on the job than me an’ knowed more about 
things like that.” 

“He come into my part,” deposed the engineer, an’ I 
seen the game in a minute.” Darrel exulted. “I’d done 
histin’ fer a spell an’ didn’t mind him. 

“ ‘Is it true about all this extravvygance I’ve heard, 
‘Mister—er Polly,’ did yer say?’ sez he, an’ I had to 
hang my head an' twist an injector so he wouldn't see 
me laughin’. He told me what Farley said an’ about 
them road-scrapins, an’ it was plainer than ever he was 
drunk. To get rid of him I told him it was, but nothin’ 
to compare with the men gettin’ twenty-five hund’ed 
pounds for ev’ry ton, as I heard they give ’em on the 
tipple. 

“‘The idee, the idee!' he sez, an’ lots of things not so 
nice. ‘Just what I thought, an’ that’s why I come up 
here,’ he says, an’ went trampin’ up them thirty-eight 
steps to the weigh-office quite frisky but uncertain. The 
heat in the bilers hadn’t made him any soberer.” 

Micky Gawan, stable-boss, spoke next. 

“I was on the tipple gettin’ some waste an’ car-ile to 
swab a mule’s sore foot, gentlemen an' Mister Chairman,” 
Micky started quite composedly, “an’ was talkin to the 
foreman, who had just come up the pit, when I run into 
the performance—last act. I knowed old Amos, of 
course, but wondered what brought him there monkeyin’ 
around, an’ was on the p'int of askin’ when I see Darrel 
at the bottom shakin’ his fist at me to keep quiet. I did, 
an’ seen him rummagin’ round the weighin’ office an’ 
gettin’ in the weighman’s road.” 

Neither was there doubt in the subsequent deposition 
of Micky Gawan as to his belief that Rummel was tern- 


In The Carbon Hills 


125 


porarily insane when he had loudly proclaimed it as fact 
known to every one on the premises (for so they had 
themselves said to him) that the company was being 
cheated out of at least five hundred pounds on every 
ton; said he knew something about scales, and asked 
who had the regulating of such things there. 

“Mr. Morris, the foreman, told him quietly that some¬ 
one was makin’ a monkey of him, as him an’ the State 
Inspector had tended to that duty not long before, at 
which Rummel motioned the foreman away from the 
weigh-house. They went toward the step-landin’, an’ 
the old man tripped over a rail an’ three or four things 
like this come out of his pocket an’ went down the shaft 
—on’y this one.” 

Gawan handed an over-leaded scale weight to Coil- 
son. The latter looked at the inanimate thief of labor 
and, silently, without comment, passed it round to those 
near him on the platform. The use of it and the others 
which had, according to Gawan, gone precipitately down 
the shaft, would have robbed each miner of 20 or 25 per 
cent of his earnings. 

“After that,” Micky resumed, “I didn’t hear no more 
until the Colville man an’ Morris got to argyin’ over some 
p’int, an’ Rummel got his shirt off an’ said somethin’ to 
Morris about him not bein’ so all-fired honest, an’ that 
he was pritty good at hoodwinkin’ others. Mr. Rummel 
was very mad an’ careless in his words, an’ the big fore¬ 
man was very white, I noticed, but said nothin’ to that, 
on’y looked at the little man as Mr. Collson’s hound 
would look at the tarrier. What partickler words passed 
between ’em after I can’t say, as the cars was dumpin’ 
then, an’ on’y stopped about the time old Amos was so 
mad the ’baccer juice was runnin’ out of his mouth, an’ 
he was tellin’ the foreman it wasn’t as bad as givin’ 
money to innercent girls . 

Here Gawan stopped, looked questioningly at Collson. 


126 


In The Carbon Hills 


The old man nodded and the little mule-boss resumed 
his narrative. 

“Just then,” said he, taking a new hitch on himself, 
“Morris seen me right dost, an’ it seemed to cross him 
as anybody should hear what the old man said what 
he did.” 

At this he again paused and looked first at Collson and 
then at John Morris, neither of whom seemed perturbed 
at all over the implied wickedness of the foreman. Re¬ 
ceiving neither encouragement to continue nor hint to 
stop Micky explained his position to the men: 

“That’s the truth anyways, gentlemen, an’ nothin’ but 
the truth, so help me, though I say it as don’t want to. 
But I was fetched here to tell what I heard, an’ was told 
to say it all.” Then he went on: 

“Morris didn’t say it was the truth nor a lie. He just 
stood watchin’ the funny antics Rummel was cuttin’ up, 
an’ said out loud: “Youn worse than poor Pietrecco . . .” 

“What he meant by that I can’t say as I didn’t hear 
nothin’ pass between ’em about the explosion. But ] 
did see Rummel push his fist up in Morris’s face an’ tell 
him he was somethin’ that was no sooner out of his 
dirty mouth than Morris took him by the coat collar an 
-” Gawan faltered—“Jim Darrel can tell you the rest.” 

With that Gawan sat down, heaving an intense sigh of 
relief, and the engine-man continued: 

“I was again takin’ a whiff in the open, gentlemen an’ 
chairman, after the tanker had signaled a wreck on th’ 
bottom, an’ I heard the nasty words plain where I stood 
forty odd feet below the two men, an’, in less’n a min¬ 
ute—yes, in less’n two seconds—up at the landin’ was a 
man’s body hangin’ with somebody holdin’ it steady so 
it shouldn’t fall sideways into the shaft! An’ the next 
I seen was a bundle of arms an’ legs cornin’ bumpitty- 
bumpitty-bump an’ a hat flyin’ down the hole, an’ me at 



In The Carbon Hills 


127 

the bottom a-holdin’ my breath helpless as a child to 
stop it . . 

“Of course,” said Collson; “Of course,” murmured the 
men in a real big wave of sympathy for Darrel’s horrible 
position. 

“An’ that’s all I seen,” said he, “exceptin’ the foreman 
an’ the men on the tipple laughin’ at the top, an’ Rummel 
a-jumpin’ straight up an’ down an’ cussin’ somethin’ aw¬ 
ful at the bottom, an’ rubbin’ his- with me there a 

Baptist deacon an’ a married man with nine children be¬ 
side not countin’ Pollie Darrel . . 

Here the rotund guardian of “Old Polly’s” activities 
sat down, his story still murmuring its fragments over 
his lips. Like “Polly” as it neared the end it had in¬ 
creased in speed, with the result that it was still running 
almost by sheer force of momentum and horror when 
Collson arose to address the audience. 

“You knowin’, gentlemen, what happened after that. 
Mr. Wilkes, as was always such a good friend of Eldred 
Morris’s until then, told him the mine would run without 
his services until they could get another to fill his place, 
an’ Morris wanted us to go on that way, as Superintend¬ 
ent Turley was a certificate man an’ the mine needn’t 
stop.* He said he was goin’ to quit soon anyway for a 
long spell of hard studyin’. Wasn’t them the fac’s?” he 
turned to John Morris, 
menced: 

“That would be good enough on’y for one thing. The 
foreman lost his place because he wouldn’t help in robbin’ 
the men, an’ for the men to let him go that way would 
rob him of his chances. The fact as he was discharged 
at his first place will go hard on him gettin’ another. 

The Local President nodded and Collson recom- 

*At that period the State allowed no mine employing over 
ten men to run unless in direct charge of an official duly certified 
by the Commonwealth as competent. 




128 


In The Carbon Hills 


If Rummel, or whoever is owner of TK Effie in these 
puzzlin’ days, lets him resign after bein’ re-instated, that 
puts a different face on it.” 

While the applause died down the old miner sat, trem¬ 
ulous with age and unusual emotion, seeing, perhaps, 
the rupture of life-long friendships. He turned to Darrel 
and suggested he act as chairman. “I want to make a 
motion,” he said. He did, as follows: 

“An’ now, Mr. Chairman an’ gents, I move as the mat¬ 
ter as it stands between these men be rayconsidered as 
far as concerns Eldred Morris, or let the mine stand idle 
until it is!” 

The old lampman placed a bitter emphasis on the last 
of his sentence. He got no further. The motion was 
seconded simultaneously in several places over the hall, 
and met with an approval which shook the windows, 
these being none of the tightest. The younger men, hav¬ 
ing more deep at heart the prospective play-days than 
any possible vindication of their respected foreman, flung 
hats and caps and yelled like charging Sioux. The older 
men remained to formally enact the unanimous decision 
and elect another “Speshul Commity” to carry the news 
to Wilkes. 


CHAPTER XVI. 


AN INTERCESSION 

Following the difference between Eldred Morris and 
Miss Wilkes the friendship between the elder members 
of the two families was augmented rather than diminish¬ 
ed. This paradoxically pleasant fact was not the result 
of the lover’s quarrel nor any attempt to patch it, but 
of the life-friendship of the former schoolma’ams, and 
the fact of Emily Morris being very ill of body. Such 
was the diagnosis of Doctor Hilman. The neighbors, ig¬ 
norant of such matters as neighbors are, said “worry.” 
Effie and Elizabeth Wilkes went often to see her, and 
rarely without a few flowers or else some delicacy to 
tempt the invalid’s palate. 

The young man and woman being about equally dis¬ 
posed in stubbornness studiously avoided each other. 
Mrs. Wilkes carefully abetted this, by watching that 
Eldred Morris had passed the big house on his way to 
Colville before she and Elizabeth started for Morris’s. 
Once or twice in severe crises of Emily Morris’s illness 
she had gone at night, but as a rule her plans were not 
upset; the erstwhile foreman persistently pondered intri¬ 
cate problems in the theory of mining. The very mo¬ 
mentum, once freed of the drag of responsibility, gave 
him time to look neither to the right nor left. The 
College faculty, after mature consideration of Eldred 
Morris’s experience in mining, and the State papers 
granted him, had agreed on the unusual course. All these 
were to count toward an ultimate degree as Mining En¬ 
gineer. 


129 


130 


In The Carbon Hills 


“It’s like taking a car downhill with four sprags in and 
three of them suddenly breaking,” he told Collson. 

But the strenuous mental effort was telling. He 
had lost much of his former heaviness and slowness. 
He had grown more nervous than phlegmatic, and was 
unusually irritable at times. He and Wilkes had spoken 
in much heat at parting, both declaring they would or 
would not do this or that if the heavens fell, or, what 
would be equally bad for Carbonia as well as Wilkes and 
a few others, if the steady contract with certain large 
steel works went by default. When the crucial test came 
both wisely reconsidered. 

The one most close to the men was prompted more 
by outside circumstances than otherwise. Each day 
Eldred Morris held firm meant to the semi-starving 
miners the loss of nearly a thousand dollars in wages, 
and, what was still worse, a more slender hold on a fast- 
vanishing contract meaning much to their future. That 
these considerations had made desperate others as well 
may be assumed by the fact of Wilkes starting toward 
Morris’s very late one night immediately on his return 
from a conference with Rummel at Colville. And Eliza¬ 
beth would have no denial but that she should accompany 
him thither “to see Mrs. Morris.” Fortunate subterfuge. 

“But it’s almost hopeless, I know,” Wilkes desponded, 
as he left Elizabeth some distance from the house and 
with hard beating heart went up to the door and rapped. 
He knew by all the ethics of mine officialdom he and 
Eldred Morris should have settled the matter alone. 
Yet he feared to do so. And Elizabeth, anyhow, was a 
better talker, and—here Roger Wilkes’s surmising stop¬ 
ped. 

His first effort had met with no response. “They’re all 
asleep,” he said to the woman in the darkness. 

“Knock harder, papa,” Elizabeth whispered urgently 
through the blackness between them. “There’s a light 


In The Carbon Hills 


* 3 * 

in this side-window or near it, and a minute ago it moved. 
I saw someone bending over a table until he pulled the 
blind down.” 

So Wilkes rapped again—harder—and yet again, and 
in the end was rewarded by someone calling to him from 
the window: “Hello! Who’s there?” 

“It’s Wilkes,” said the man at the bottom, looking up. 
Then: “Is that Eldred?” knowing it quite well, but 
parleying for an opening. 

For an answer there came what sounded to Wilkes like 
a grunt, which is proof evident that Eldred Morris could 
be both stubborn and ill-mannered on occasion. 

“I’ve come about The Bffie ,” Wilkes explained, seeing 
that the man above made no move toward coming down 
nor asking him in. “Rummel's agreed that you can 
return . . .” 

In the heavy, ominous, silence which followed it seem¬ 
ed to the woman in the shadows, inky black on each 
side of the light coming from the open window, that her 
heart was beating in her throat. To Wilkes the tension 
was still less endurable. The next word meant to him 
the possible saving of half a life’s labor or its irredeem¬ 
able loss. His fingers went cold in his gloves while he 
waited over what was in reality only a few moments of 
consideration, yet seemed an eternity. His teeth chat¬ 
tered yet the night was not overly cold for November. 
He grew suddenly warm with passion. The window 
started to slide with the answer: 

“Tell Rummel I’m not, good night . . .” The name 

had been fatal to the attempt’s success. The blind again 
went down. 

Sorrowfully the pair started over the knoll and into 
the swail dividing the two homes, Elizabeth pleading, 
insisting, that Wilkes let her return and see if she could 
do better. Her effort finally prevailed. They returned. 

She urged him to go with her but he refused, prefer- 


i 3 2 


In The Carbon Hills 


ring to remain on the little knoll some distance from the 
house. 

The light in the window still shone dimly through the 
blind, lighting within the porer over cosine and tangent. 
John Morris had risen and was in the kitchen for a drink 
of water for the invalid when the second rapping came. 
Wondering, he opened the door, and the girl told her 
errand. He went to the stairs. 

“Somebody’s here an’ wants to see you, Eldred,” he 
called. 

“Then tell ’em to climb,” came the impatient reply. 
“I’ve no time to be bothered at this time of night,” he 
persisted testily, impatient with the untimely visits 
which had twice spoiled an isosceles drawing and a 
chance of bed. 

“But it’s a lady—Lizzie Wilkes,” retorted John Morris 
in a tone of mild censure. He was half-way up the steps 
but returned on seeing the light followed by his son at 
the top. 

“Ask Miss Wilkes to come up, dad,” the larger voice 
commanded, forgetting the proprieties. Then as sudden¬ 
ly remembering: “But never mind, I’ll come down.” 

When he reached the kitchen his father had discreetly 
gone back to bed, leaving the young woman crimsoning 
and paling by turns, her deep bosom heaving like undu¬ 
lating water. Eldred’s greeting was not conducive of 
composure. 

“You’ve come about the mine?” he inquired rather 
curtly, and she nodded. “And at nearly midnight— 
alone?” 

Elizabeth reassured him on that point by stating that 
her papa preferred to wait out near a certain clump of 
hazels. And then the naughty fellow laughed, remember¬ 
ing a certain hoarse cough the girl before him had heard 
there one night. He knew the spot well and recalled it 


In The Carbon Hills 


133 


with pleasure. She did, too, and the same thought 
flashed a rose-red color to her very ears. 

“It’s a splendid place for meditation,” the man smiled, 
which hid the latent contempt lying in the words. “But 
this kitchen isn’t,” he shivered purposely; “it’s too cold. 
There’s a little heater in my den,” he suggested, “if you 
care to come up and get warm . . .” They went up. 

Eldred Morris seated himself on the little table and 
gave Elizabeth the only chair. She blushed fearfully 
when he tormentinglv asked her if she had brought the 
note she promised one Sunday morning in the coppice, 
while he thought without expression of the strangeness 
of prophecy sometimes. He turned suddenly to more 
serious matters: 

“Why don’t Rummel go ahead and run?” and it was 
obviously with a sense of gratification that he asked that 
question. “I made an oath that if it lay to me to start 
it it would wait until-.” 

“Until—what?” 

“Well, if vou must have it—until hell froze over”—he 
said bluntly, “or what is quite as likely—until he brought 
Margaret Thomas here so I could hear her tell him he 
was a liar,” which was not so shocking to the girl as if 
she had not heard it before. “That’s why I dismissed 
your father. But anyhow I have no time—now—to boss. 
I’m after something better,” he waved his hand over the 
instruments and papers, “and I’m going to get it, too, if 
I live long enough,” he averred with determined pride. 
“I’m determined to have that in a frame, and here,” he 
touched his forehead, whether boastfully or not the read¬ 
er may decide for himself, “that’ll mean more honor to 
the woman who’ll bear my name than all the money at’ 
Colville First National with what goes with— that.” 

He looked at his visitor as if questioning a denial. 
But she could not well deny that she had but vaguely 
heard. In a desperate attempt to review each point she 



134 


In The Carbon Hills 


had been told to make concerning her mission in the 
present, her mind had closed almost to all else. She re¬ 
verted directly to the subject at hand. 

“Eldred,” she pleaded, “don’t you know, really, that 
the men won’t go back until you tell them to?” 

“I did hear Rummel and your dad had been doing a 
little missionary work with a view to having them 
change their mind,'’ he countered. “But what about 
Wilkes—what about that your father said?” 

He started to say something else, but with an old-time 
familiarity born partly of the occasion and partly of the 
desperate situation as she well knew of at home, she put 
her hand up to his mouth and stopped him. 

“Don’t,” she begged; “please don’t. I’ve heard all the 
miserable details. Papa’s sorry or—or he wouldn’t have 
come here as he did . . 

It was some minutes before another word passed be¬ 
tween them, as attested by the gold chronometer beat¬ 
ing its way toward dawn. Sleeping in idleness, without 
air to measure, the wooden paddles of the anemometer 
snuggled at diverse angles in their case, and the light¬ 
less Davy leaned dejectedly against a new transit. The 
man looked without purpose at a map nearly completed, 
and she at his eyes. And in both minds many lines of 
thought crossed and conflicted. 

At length he asked if they had seen Rummel that night, 
and she assured him it was the result of a journey there 
which had brought them to see him so late. 

“We didn’t get home until about eleven, and would 
have waited until to-morrow only papa thought he might 
give the men a day’s work sooner—if you—if you were 
agreed. And the contract-.” 

Morris impatiently stopped her. The indirect sugges¬ 
tion that he had been and might be responsible for such 
suffering as was reaching flood tide in the village ruffled 
him. 




In The Carbon Hills 


135 


“My sanction!” he spoke harshly. “Doesn’t he mean 
that of three hundred men whose cupboards are empty 
for a matter of—of principle and honesty?” At a later 
time those words were recalled in poignant memory and 
—blood. He added ironically: “But what’s the use? I 
reckon there are old fools as well as young ones. But 
the older the worse, I fancy; they haven't the excuse of 
inexperience.” 

“Mr. Rummel seemed to think he had,” Elizabeth in¬ 
terjected more hopefully, “when he spoke of those steps 
to-night,” the light in her smiling eyes illuming the gloom 
in the darker, sterner, ones. The thought of the last act 
in the tipple melodrama brought better humor. 

“Then I suppose I’m to—what am I to do at this time 
of night, Elizabeth, or Miss Wilkes, is it?” striding to¬ 
ward the chair she had pushed away from the table. As 
he came nearer she rose suddenly, but her eyes looked 
at the floor. She made no resistance when he gently 
laid his hand on her shoulder and repeated the last ques¬ 
tion. 

“The old name hasn’t changed—yet,” she said rather 
sadly, “and it never will to—my friends, I hope.” Then, 
raising her eyes to his she asked pleadingly: her fingers 
creeping up and touching his hand: “And you and I will 
always be-that, Eldred, I think, no matter what hap¬ 

pens, won’t we?” 

“Is it true,” he side-stepped the question, “that it has 
to change to— that ?'’ he squeezed the soft hand and his 
lips quivered with awakening passion, while the woman's 
heart beat tumultuously and the crimson came and went 
in her cheeks. “Is there nothing else for it but—that?’’ 

Then she told him that he had asked but did not want 
to hear, yet, hearing, found no condemnation at his 
tongue’s end—not then. Both found means of occupying 
their fingers and their thoughts. Her head was bent 
when he broke the silence, but at his first words she 



136 


In The Carbon Hills 


raised it and for the second time that night tried to stop 
him by putting her hand over his lips. He pulled it 
gently away. 

“Why not?” he queried; “I can perhaps wrap up a 
messy package as neatly as it need be done/’ but he 
spoke without mirth. He desired only to ease her mind 
rather than his own, to help her—the girl he loved— 
acquiesce in the inevitable, seeing that it must be. Eldred 
Morris felt his own relative insignificance in the face of 
money-powder as he had never sensed it before, but, be¬ 
ing a true son of The Carbon Hills he had the courage 
of his native element to accept that he must accept with¬ 
out cringing. The fact that the prospect seared his 
heart was not as evident as it might have been while 
he tried to soothe another's. It was very evident he 
felt most kindly toward Roger Wilkes, and repeated al¬ 
most word for word what had been said at the big house 
regarding “The Price” demanded by Rummel, which 
caused Elizabeth to open her eyes in astonishment. 

“Please don't,” she pleaded, as he recalled words and 
scenes which unknown to her had been re-enacted in 

Carbonia’s tenements. “I see you understand, and- 

I’m glad you do.” 

“I have tried to understand, Elizabeth,” he affirmed, 
“because I have tried to find the whys and wherefores 
of your own actions, otherwise,” he said sadly, question¬ 
ing her with his eyes, “I would doubt even my own 
mother since she, too, is a woman.” 

His eyes were hard like tempered steel as he said 
these words, and this: 

“But there are some things harder for even a woman 
to bear through life than an empty cupboard occasion¬ 
ally, Elizabeth. Knowing men better than mines, your 
father knows that, too; as regards anyone else I-.” 

Seeing how his bitterness wounded, he spoke more 
buoyantly, hopeful. “I know enough of this matter, 




In The Carbon Hills 


137 


Elizabeth, to assure you we do not blame—you,” pur j 
posely using the plural, “no more than I could be blamed 
for the strike. And as you said,” he took her unresisting 
hand in his to wish her good-bye, “we can still be friends, 
I hope, because mother’s ill, as you know, and little er¬ 
rands of charity and kindness are always permissible after 
marriage as well as before, particularly,” he added with a 
sly twinkle puckering the corners of his eyes, “when 
there’s no boy handy to bring them—the flowers or pud¬ 
dings, I mean—and Sophy’s in the tub; and in addition,” 
he ran on without giving her a chance to object to his 
unconventional propositions, which she hadn’t time to 
amend anyhow, while the tears dried and were replaced 
by smiles chasing each other like little sunbeams in a 
grape-arbor after a midsummer’s rain, and the man’s 
voice went up and down in tiny galloping cadences that 
sang of Love Uncrushed and Hope Eternal, “and in ad¬ 
dition Mrs. MacDonald’s abed with the ’leventh little 
Donald, so the fireboss—who is The Effie's expectant fore¬ 
man—came to inform us yesterday, meanwhile sputter¬ 
ing equal amounts of Scotch brogue and Scotch rye 
and . . . But that’s all,” he said breathlessly, turning 

her face round full to his own, “and pity poor dad!" 

“Oh,” exclaimed Elizabeth, quite as positively as if 
she had been outside to see, “I almost forgot him; but 
I’m glad it’s moderated.” 

“Yes,” he replied, “it’s moderated considerably, and 
he won’t mind the wait,” which double meaning wasn’t 
as obvious as the farewell touch of his hand in hers. 

A little later a now shivering girl was telling with 
dithering tongue to a man not quite frozen but almost, 
what a terribly hard time she had to convince a certain 
young mining man that it would take but a few minutes 
of his valuable time to do her a little favor—to kindly 
go across the fields and tell Fireman “Duck” Farley— 
who was on night turn that week—he could blow that 


138 In The Carbon Hills 

almost rusty whistle immediately; that he could keep 
its lever fastened down just a moment under sixty min¬ 
utes after he had toot-en-toot-en-tooted it so Carbonia 
would think for a certainty the mine was blown up or 
the tipple on fire. 

And then when Bobbie Burns MacDonald—having the 
longest legs and the thinnest body of any representative 
of the male in our village—should come running with 
his night-shirt to the wind so as to be first on the scene— 
to disillusion him kindly, and advise him that it was 
something infinitely better and almost as interesting, and 
that he could at the earliest possible moment convey the 
same to Carbonia; that Eldred Morris was going to stand 
at the shaft at starting-time that same morning and ad¬ 
vise the men they were now absolved from their pact, 
but that he had unfortunately made certain arrangements 
at Colville College which he could not very well break, 
but that he would give in his resignation to take place 
immediately in favor of Donald MacDonald, whom the 
old men liked almost as well and the young ones a great 
deal better because of his being on speaking terms with 
Stradivarius as well as Sir Humphrey Davy, and who 
was withal a gentleman much more deserving of Car- 
bonia’s favors, having, in the preceding month, added to 
the village assets a pair of twins—one of whom Eldred 
had omitted—and a Pennsylvania First Class Mine Fore¬ 
man’s Certificate. 

s(c 51 s sk H* sft * 

There passed a period the exact length of which is im¬ 
material to our story. We do not recall its approximation 
anyway. One of those frequent changes in the National 
life was come. For some time Prosperity had been hang¬ 
ing on the lagging heels of Panic. The entire Nation 
as well as the mine industry shared the uplift. The 
“bulls” on the stock exchange at Pittsburgh as elsewhere 
went “wild.” Mines which had for a number of years 



In The Carbon Hills 


: 39 


dragged out a precarious existence with the ever-present 
shadow of bankruptcy hanging over them, were sprucing 
up. Many were sold, some becoming by purchase and 
exchange of stock units in the huge corporation known as 
The Coal Trust. Morgan—the Napoleon of industry—• 
was combining great steel mills with each other, while 
other lesser minds did the same thing in our industry. 
Big contracts were going to be the rule instead of the 
exception. Astute Roger Wilkes saw through the in¬ 
dustrial clouds a rainbow of hope. He took advantage 
of certain options which a few months later would have 
been ruthlessly closed to him. In the meantime The Bffie 
boomed, and several months passed without Eldrod Mor¬ 
ris seeing Elizabeth again. She had several times ac¬ 
companied her mother on missions of sympathy to the 
invalid, but always on those days and hours when the 
embryo mining engineer was in school at Colville. 

Then came a period without visit or word from the big 
house. Through Sophie, Carbonia heard whispers, which 
could not be substantiated, of an approaching wedding— 
of much argument and continued difference of opinion 
with the masterful Effie nearly always the victor. This 
domination had never lessened, according to Miss Sophie, 
neither had the former school teacher’s desire to “be 
somebody, indeed !” financially, at almost any price. How 
much of this was true and how much false Eldred Mor¬ 
ris had no means of finding out, for Mrs. Wilkes talked 
only of the weather, the mine, and its prospects, at Mrs. 
Morris’s, if we except the comparison of “symptoms.” 

The truth dawned vengefully on the former mine-fore¬ 
man one morning when he met Wilkes on the path lead¬ 
ing to the fast-growing Bffie. Here, on those days when 
school was not in session, the mining student spent much 
of his time with firebosses and foreman and Turley. For 
the old lampman his friendship and respect were never 
greater—and this included also almost the entire person- 


140 In The Carbon Hills 

nel of the big mine. And in unusual degree this was re¬ 
turned. But in mining matters Eldred Morris had out¬ 
grown his miner-friends; he stood on an eminence alone 
in his own circle now, soul and body absorbed in the 
greater features of this ever-growing industry. He was 
going over this morning to see a big new fan recently 
installed when Wilkes met him. 

He spoke rather coldly, yet sadly, Eldred thought. His 
looks were those of a beaten fighter. This was their first 
personal contact since the strike. He inquired regarding 
Mrs. Morris, and was sorry to hear she was worse, and 
that Margaret Thomas, having recently become Margaret 
Farley, had left and the men were batching, no other 
girl being available since Esther went away. 

“We must go over to see her,” he said more cordially, 
meaning Mrs. Morris. 

Eldred Morris said nothing, but turned to go. Wilkes, 
as by an afterthought, called to him and thrust forward a 
square, unsealed, envelope containing what seemed like 
heavy paper or cardboard upon which invitations to wed¬ 
dings are usually engraved. 

“I’ve just given MacDonald one, and intended to send 
this over to your folks as a courtesy to your father and 
mother, you know,” thus qualifying what he had at first 
meant to say. Morris slipped it into his pocket. “I, at 
least, wouldn't want our old friends to think a little 
prosperity has turned our heads,” Wilkes murmured al¬ 
most to himself. They parted. 

Standing beside the great steel blades as they whirled 
above the fan-shaft Eldred Morris read the thing in the 
envelope. His face was nearly as white as the paper, and 
his hand trembled slightly as a moment later he lifted 
the now torn bits—exquisitely perfumed—first to his nos¬ 
trils, and a peculiar smile awoke in his dark eyes. 

“Perhaps,” he said, holding his open palm with the 
heaped fragments on it directly in line with, but not too 


In The Carbon Hills 


141 

near, the swirling vortex. For weeks, perhaps months, 
as blackened, indecipherable things, held tight by the 
force of rotation against the steel, they would whirl there 
darkening faster than grew the gloom clutching the 
miner-student’s heart. 

When he reached home he carried out some little at¬ 
tentions to his mother and said nothing about the thing 
he had destroyed. When he had occasion to go out into 
the dark that night the light in a certain room shone 
vividly, tormenting, across the field, and filled him with 
a tumultuous emotion that endured. But with dawn 
came overwhelming purpose: work: work: work, more 
eager than before, and with it a sense of acquiescence in 
the unavoidable. 


CHAPTER XVII. 


“WHERE THEY KEEP LITTLE BABIES” 

Mrs. Wilkes had crossed The Rubicon and found rest, 
and her needle plied busily each day and ofttimes into 
the night. Roger had found unrest, uncertainty. Rumors 
were rife but thus far nothing beyond the mere com¬ 
monplace could be proven, and weren’t all boys thus? 
Tragedy and crime grow behind walls sometimes. 

This contention being settled in her favor Effie Wilkes 
found no objection to acting as chaperon to Elizabeth 
when they went, as Roger had promised, to see Mrs. 
Morris. All danger of a mesalliance past these visits 
were more frequent, of an evening as often as of a morn¬ 
ing or noon. And on one such occasion Effie Wilkes 
found her friend much worse after having grown some¬ 
what better. Eldred, Emily Morris cried, was going 
away. He had applied for and obtained a position as 
foreman in a distant field. He had decided for the pres¬ 
ent to discontinue his studies. She was concerned for 
Tom, too, who had followed Esther to Pittsburgh, and 
hoped the letter brought up from Colville post office by 
the Wilkes’s maid, and which Effie Wilkes handed to 
John Morris for Eldred, was from him. It had no return 
card, but was a bulky thing indeed and hardly such as 
Tom would write under ordinary circumstances. Yet it 
was postmarked “Pittsburgh.” And didn’t Mrs. Wilkes 
know that Esther had gone to the city and that Tom had 
followed her—really? Well, such was the case, and Mrs. 
Wilkes, pleading only that her friend would cease her 
harmful worry, gave no indication of regret. Instead, 

142 


In The Carbon Hills 


143 


while Elizabeth, in another room, stifled her curiosity 
as best she could, Effie Wilkes talked of the great pros¬ 
pects now in view for miners and their families, too, if 
—with a meaning glance at John Morris who sat in the 
corner with MacDonald—if the men behaved as they 
should. 

“But it’s getting dark/’ she said, standing at the door 
and gazing across the field lying between the two hous¬ 
es, “and Fve some work to do. Really, Emmy, dear, I 
must go,” she smoothed the parting and the pillow, “but 
Elizabeth can finish straightening up for you, and I’ll 
stop at Mary MacDonald’s and tell Sophy to call for her 
when she comes home. She had a letter for Mary, too, 
you know.’’ Then, with a parting admonition aside to 
Elizabeth not to stay too long she went out. 

Upstairs a man with all the color gone from his face 
took from his pocket a crumpled note, and set it beside 
a long, nervously-scrawled letter, indifferently spelled 
and composed. The note was as brief as the letter long, 
and had been left on Eldred’s study-table the day Tom 
left. After telling why, it added: 

I’m going to find her and bring her home 
if I can .... 

“Poor Tom,” Eldred Morris spoke to the transit near 
the wall, “success and failure are close companions, some¬ 
times, as more than you have found.” 

He went down to the group in the kitchen. 

Elizabeth was setting some dishes in the cupboard 
when he went in with the letter opened in his hand. He 
had not seen her for many weeks, but he spoke with no 
more warmth than to the most casual acquaintance. 

“Good evening, Miss Wilkes,” he nodded coldly, and 
the girl covered her agitation in replying by turning and 
aimlessly picking up a broom, just as she had previously 
covered her dress with one of Emily Morris’s aprons 
far too large for her. Eldred bent to the couch and spoke 


144 


In The Carbon Hills 


very quietly to his mother, almost, it seemed to more 
than one in that room, as one speaks where the loved 
dead lie. Then he spoke aside to his father. MacDon¬ 
ald had gone home with Mrs. Wilkes. Emily Morris 
turned on the couch and spoke to Elizabeth. 

“It’s a letter from Tom,” she said, somewhat tremu¬ 
lously, “about—about—perhaps you wouldn’t care to hear 
it? He found Esther, Eldred says.” 

For a moment the girl twirled the broom-handle over 
her knees. She had seated herself on one side of the 
kitchen, Eldred on the other, where the light of a kero¬ 
sene lamp was intensified and deflected onto the papers 
in his hand. The struggle was evidently short. 

“If you folks don’t mind,” she wavered a little; “I—I 
always liked Esther and would be glad to hear how she 
is . . .” 

Near the stove John Morris shifted uneasily, and 
smoked prodigiously while the slightly returning color 
again left the face of the man below the lamp, leaving it 
this time more ghastly than before. Elizabeth Wilkes 
stole a furtive glance at Eldred Morris. He looked 
neither at her nor anyone else in the room. His eyes 
glued to the apparently lengthy letter in his hand; his 
hand trembled violently. And, sensing not the cause, the 
girl twirled the broom and—wondered. 

The silence became oppressive—unbearable. For a 
moment Eldred Morris looked at the floor in deep 
thought, then at his mother, then direct at the girl. 
Elizabeth did not see him, for her eyes were on the 
broom-handle, nor yet when his features set sternly and 
lines came in his forehead that had not been there be¬ 
fore, and his free hand was white where he clutched the 
chair. The tentative reader was obviously striving for 
self-control. 

He started slowly, faltering a little, but soon gained 
composure as he read the first of many pages: 


In The Carbon Hills 


145 


Dear Eldred, I found Esther, but she 
won’t be coming back nor me for a 
while so I thought Ed better tell you all 
about things here as I know you will be 
anxious. And it is raining bad so I 
think I’ll stop in the hotel to-night and 
put down here just the same as I could 
tell you. 

It took me several days to find her 
because she had not gone to the big hos¬ 
pitals as I thought, but one of them 
private ones, and I had to go to them all 
nearly before I found her. But I found 
her at last and she was not worrying 
much, that it was to late to worry now 
she said.. Fact was I was surprised to 
find her so cheerfull, but you know how 
Esther always laughed at you when she 
had ought to cry you would think. 

“Yes, my poor Tom; that’s only too true,” came with 
a sigh from the couch, as if the invalid were speaking to 
some invisible body. Eldred resumed: 


And as near as I can tell I will tell 
you what she said about everybody she 
asked showing her the way to the big 
hospitals, until one policeman who help¬ 
ed her across the car tracks showed her 
the right one after directing her to the 
one she did not want to go to. He 
looked at her so funny she said, lafif- 
ing for all she was so white looking, 
that I just had to tell him, she said, 
that if I did walk a bit awkward that 
I did not need no crutches nor a leg 


146 


In The Carbon Hills 


cut off, and that I could walk without 
his arm. 

No, he said, looking at me and laff- 
ing a bit, I’m afraid it’s a different place 
than my arm you need. And I told him 
it was—that I wanted to find a place 
where they kept little babies. And he 
asked me did T mean the private places, 
because it cost money there, and I told 
him yes, that I had the money because 
gentlemen that send for babies gener¬ 
ally give the money to buy them dont 
they, and the big fellow laffed so I 
seen him wiping his eyes as soon as he 
stopped and looked up the street at the 
building he showed me, she said. May¬ 
be policemen laff, sometimes, like Es¬ 
ther, when they feel like crying. 

I had a sister too he said, God help 
her, but he did not laff when he said 
that. Esther put her hand under the 
pillow and showed me two one-hundred 
dollar bills she had not changed and 
I asked her some questions . . . No 

he did not pay me that for working for 
his mother at Colville nor for slapping 
his face in the grove she said, and I 
understood. 

At this point Eldred dropped the hand holding the 
letter to his knee, and let his eyes wander toward the 
door. The young lady there looked very white, and the 
room must have suddenly become too hot to suit her. 
She pushed the door wide open and fanned herself with 
Emily Morris’s gingham. The woman on the couch shift¬ 
ed without speaking, but it was obvious she wanted 


In The Carbon Hills 


147 


to badly. In the middle of the room, with his hands in 
each other, and both behind him, John Morris paced 
the floor in soft-slippered feet and filled the space above 
him with great banks of smoke. Not a single word 
passed anent that phase of it. No one condemned aud¬ 
ibly at least, although Eldred had several times caught 
his mother’s lips moving and her eyes resting savagely 
on the girl at the door. Oh, unfathomable woman! 
Eldred Morris commenced a new page. 

The second day Esther wasn’t as well. 

That was a miserable dav for I had a 
notion to go out and choke the loud¬ 
mouths shouting cabbage and things 
and a girl as sick as she was. Why at 
Carbonia they took the wagons round 
through the fields because Margaret 
Thomas’s sister had nervous prostra¬ 
tion you remember Eldred. 

Morris read this sentence with a sigh at the boy’s 
simple innocence. “That isn’t Carbonia by any means,’’ 
he said, and from the couch: “Poor Esther! Poor little 
soul!” 


The third day was the last, Eldred 
started again, and I kept waiting to see 
if I could send any good news. Esther 
said when I went in she thought I had 
gone back. Not till you can come along 
I told her trying to cheer her up. But 
she could see the end allright and was 
worried over the baby a lot. I give her 
my solemn oath we’d look after it, 
Eldred, and she went to sleep right 
away and the doctor said he wondered 


In The Carbon Hills 


148 

why some kind of action was delayed 
till then as he had tried to get morfine 
to take effect for many hours. I could 
have told him but I didn’t and it will 
if I have to pay for it myself. But that 
is easy. This is what got me. God how 
hard this was to have to promise to 
bury her here among strangers in a 
strange cemetery. She simply would 
not hear of being took to Carbonia. 

Said she didn’t care about anybody see¬ 
ing her but there was some girls up 
there as might be glad behind their 
tears which they would not but she 
thought they would. 

This information added somewhat to the color already 
blood-red on the cheeks of the girl at the door. What 
followed next didn’t reduce it by any means. 

I asked her if T should send word to 
you to have him pinched but she 
wouldn’t hear of it—said it would do no 
good now and might some way give his 
folks the chance to get her baby and 
she would rather he died than that. 

This seemed to worry her terrible and 
whatever his daddy might be, Eldred, 
he’s a fine little fellow as ever I seen 
but all like Esther (the simple miner’s 
heart eased its own wound a little). 

Make arrangements right away about 
getting him out of here and-. 

At this point John Morris spoke first. Emily Morris 
also said something. Eldred also had a suggestion that 



In The Carbon Hills 


149 


he wanted to voice for fear he might forget, and Miss 
Wilkes thought that Mary MacDonald and her husband 
would be less worried if they knew. She slipped out al¬ 
most unnoticed and returned with the MacDonalds just 
in time to hear the very thing she had tried to avoid 
hearing—without seeming to concur in wickedness in 
which she had no part by leaving now rather than hear 
the last of it—the sad ending of a long letter written to 
ease an over-burdened heart that had loved unwisely and 
too well. 

“Sit here, Mary," the reader turned, letter in hand, to 
the white-faced woman whose excessive blue eyes bulged 
more than ever with suppressed excitement and curiosity. 
Miss Wilkes had said only: “The letter’s about your 
niece, and they want you to read it yourself," hoping it 
would be finished by the time they got there. It wasn’t. 
Mrs. MacDonald had picked up her baby and almost 
ran. Donald followed more sedately as became the 
official over so many men. But his big heart thumped 
hard in expectation of the worst, and his features almost 
equalled his wife’s in pallor when Emily Morris whis¬ 
pered : 

“Eldred hasn’t finished vet. Mary, but I’m afraid— 
I’m afraid that Esther won’t, come back." What else she 
might have said was shut off by her son. 

“I’ll just go on and finish it, Donald, and you and 
Mary can take it home with you and read it all.” He 
started on the line last read : 

to make arrangements about taking him 
out of here. 

“That’s the child, Mary,” Mrs. Morris brooked the 
reader’s look of censure to explain: "Esther’s child." 

She knowed she was going to die 
and-. 



In The Carbon Hills 


150 

The letter was stopped again, this time by an excla¬ 
mation from Mrs. MacDonald. 

“Oh, my God!” cried she, “is Essie dead?” looking for 
sympathy to Mrs. Morris. But the invalid shut her lips 
resolutely, and MacDonald whispered eagerly for his wife 
to control herself: didn’t she know there was a sick 
woman here? The woman bit her lips in a brave effort. 

She knowed she was going to die, 
and all I did to fool her was no use. I 
told her to hurry and get well and come 
w r ith me to Carbonia and we would get 
married at Tirrel’s and the child could 
stay with her too if she wanted it. 

“Gude lad, Tammas,” Donald MacDonald said, at which 
John Morris looked at him, questioning the assertion, 
while the woman on the couch turned her face with a 
sigh to the wall. 

She only smiled and shook her head. 

She couldn’t hardly talk for she was a 
lot worse and as white as a ghost—a 
hemmerage of something had taken 
place the doctor said and that he didn’t 
want to let me in to see her that morn¬ 
ing only she begged him to. You know 
how pink she was. Her head fell back 
every time she tried to raise it like 
that dago Rossi you told me about as 
was hit with slate, and I knowed then 
Esther wasn’t coming back with me 
• • • • 

And here the letter stopped again because of the read¬ 
er. The voice of the strong man had at last overcome 
his efforts to control it. He waited for composure while 


In The Carbon Hills 


I 5 i 

his mother twisted the fingers of her right hand in her 
left until they cracked, and insisted to John Morris she 
didn’t want any wine. And the man who had asked her 
unconsciously increased his pace and pulled hard on a 
pipe that had not an atom of unsmoked tobacco in its 
bowl. At the door Elizabeth Wilkes sat without speak¬ 
ing, seeing nothing in that room and nothing without 
but dark just then. The glitter of Colville gold had 
turned to brass and even that corroded. The taste of 
verdigris in libertinism was acrid. She offered no word; 
no question was asked, each kindly keeping his or her 
gaze elsewhere until Eldred continued: 

That night I had no sleep. It was 
hardly daylight when I went to see how 
she was. The doctor was asleep but the 
darkey woman let me in and seemed to 
know all about things. She pointed to 
a different room than Esther was in the 
day before and it was so dark she come 
in after me and turned up the gas 
. . . The worried look was gone 

. Esther was peacefull enough 
then, Eldred ... I asked the 
woman where would be the best place 
to bury her and she says, home, Honey. 

I says she has none and told her all 
about it then. So she told me a place 
and give me the address of a minister 
and a undertaker. Esther had give me 
that money the day before. 

Oh, God, how it hurt you will never 
know Eldred! You can tell mother 
and dad I feel fifty years older than 
when I come away, and still you had 
better not. Mother will surely feel dif- 


* 5 2 


In The Carbon Hills 

ferent—now. I should sent for some of 
you but Esther said no, and it was all 
I could do for her to do as she said. 

Eldred Morris read fast—then—concealing no word, 

laving no wounds. 

' 1 « 

The minister—a kind young fellow he 
was—and me was all and enough—to 
much. I shall stay here for awhile is 
why I wrote so much and it is raining 
hard and putting it here has seemed 
to help me bear it. The doctor at that 
place told me to forget it! Said there 
was things in the town only he didn't 
say things he said girls as would make 
a man forget anything. It shows he 
dont know. But he laffed as if Esther's 
case was common. And not only him 
but everybody here seems to be so full 
of business I wonder if they will ever 
find time to go through what poor 
Esther did. 

There followed an address where they would find the 
child, and a postscript urging haste, and instructions re¬ 
garding identity in case Tom did not see them, which he 
thought unlikely, as he was going—he did not know 
where—but certainly farther away from there. Which 
hotel it would be he could not say, so many there were 
to choose from. 


CHAPTER XVIII. 


A WISE DOG 

Silently and without word to either of the women 
Eldred Morris entered an adjoining room. Its door stood 
open. From a mantel on its opposite side he dropped 
into his pocket an article that glistened in the semi¬ 
dark. Returning to the kitchen he reached from a rack 
his hat and coat and left the house. It had suddenly 
grown too close. God’s great atmosphere called to him 
that night as the only place giving ease to a sense of 
suffocation arising from the effluvial gases of discon¬ 
certing humanity. He turned on the hillside and looked 
back. The figure of the girl he loved still moved about 
in the light. His mother he could not see from there, 
and John Morris was gone to share his trouble with 
MacDonald or with Collson. 

Elizabeth bent over the oven. Pie for the dinner-pail 
of John Morris was burning. During the early night 
Emily Morris had directed and The Local President 
clumsily made the dough, and now forgot all about it. 
Neither woman spoke to the other. From a house re¬ 
cently built in that vicinity a feminine voice came faintly, 
then higher, more voluminous, until the words reached 
even to the man on the hill: 

“ * * beyond The River, 

Where the surges cease to roll.” 

And its soothing echoes reached the souls of the two 
women mutely listening. 

As she had done many times before in anguished 

153 


i54 


In The Carbon Hills 


moments Emily Morris caught the refrain and hummed 
gently, tremblingly almost as the voice that joined tear¬ 
fully, almost fearfully, at first with her own: 

“ * * beyond The River, 

Where the surges cease to roll.” 

Eldred Morris went slowly on. He neared the village 
edge. Behind him several rows of lights twinkled mer¬ 
rily in the extreme dark between a fitful moon. Human 
sounds reached upward coupled here and there with in¬ 
different music of mouth-organ, accordeon or fiddle. The 
pulsing joyousness evident on every hand grated mock¬ 
ingly. To the wanderer it seemed sacrilegious that none 
there should feel as he felt: sorrow as he sorrowed. The 
city was not alone in this. The occasional laughter were 
as the desecration of a grave new made. 

Morris went past several detached homes in which 
lived the better class of our village: homes of men and 
women who moved not at each change to the white 
mountain ever in the distant coal fields. He came to 
Collson’s batch and heard his father’s voice within. He 
opened the picket gate, then turned abruptly and went 
onto the road again. In the far sky the great furnaces 
reflected their glare on the floating clouds. 

And that was the way Esther was gone. There she 
had found that rest and peace which come to maid and 
matron alike in turn, without discrimination as to vir¬ 
tue or to vice, we hope. But where was Tom? Drink¬ 
ing, perhaps, or in some place of amusement across the 
river, his quiet laugh covering an almost bleeding heart. 
And surcease there? Hardly. Too unreal, too shallow, 
these mimicries of real life. The mind reflective and 
desirous may find unsnagged waters, pellucid depths for 
its barque, but not there. 

Eldred Morris turned again at the lane running past 
Wilkes’s and on to Calabrue’s, passing on his way several 


In The Carbon Hills 


1 55 


habitations flaunted by yellow journalism in the generic 
category as “miners’ hovels.” Here, as nearer the vil¬ 
lage proper, the increase in men had been the cause of 
several new homes. In one of these were gathered a 
few congenial spirits singing from hymnals lighted by 
a large lamp hung with glass pendants. The women’s 
dresses were simple but well made, and none there 
showed signs of poverty rampant or distress enforced. 
They sat on good chairs, and their feet rested on carpet 
clean as from the loom. 

In the room someone played softly and well on a 
piano-organ, at that time an instrument almost as costly 
as a fair piano today. This prayer-meeting was one of 
several held during the week in different homes, all the 
direct result of missionary work of good men and women 
from Colville churches. 

For a moment Morris stopped, almost decided to go in. 
The organ played the prelude of the hymn with touching 
tenderness, and invoked unvoiced accompaniment in the 
heart of the onlooker. Through the window he watched 
the tiny congregation rise and sing: 

“Come unto Me when shadows darkly gather; 

When the sad heart is weary and distressed. 

* * * * 

He started on, heart less bitter. There followed more 
singing of which he heard a part, the wind bringing words 
and music in rising and diminishing cadences to his ears: 

“There like an Eden blossoming in gladness 

Bloom the fair flowers the earth too rudely pressed. 

Come unto Me all ye who droop in sadness, 

Come unto Me and I will give you rest.” 

And from the depths of the miner’s heart there echoed 
a silent hope that it might be even so. 

Then his steps and thought turned in another direc- 


156 


In The Carbon Hills 


tion, the former toward Justice Tirrel’s and the latter 
toward revenge. The mollifying effect natural to song 
and prayer waned as he left its zone. For a fleeting 
moment he had almost relented enough to return ana ask 
the word or two he believed would set all things right 
between him and Elizabeth, although, being a man, he 
could not to his own satisfaction—despite his words to 
her—analyze what seemed an acquiescency in the inter¬ 
est of mere material advancement. 

He cast the prompting aside and went on out to the 
right in line with the great mine buildings, looming like 
the huge hulk of a disabled liner. The exhaust of the 
pumps and fan echoed against the distant fringe of wood, 
and before the fires in the boiler-room “Duck” Farley 
bent elf-like in the brilliant glow from an occasionally 
opened door. Where the cage hung above the shaft an 
electric bulb shone like a tiny star, for the mine had 
changed its method and Micky Gawan no longer buried 
dead mules. 

This passed, the impulse to go directly to Colville grew 
stronger. Into Eldred Morris’s heart came a feeling, and 
into every muscle a tenseness, such as he had felt only 
twice in his life before this: once when the result occas¬ 
ioned his discharge and another time because of his dis¬ 
charging another. This latter had been one of several 
negro employees, who, when ordered to quit had said 
that last word of infamy to a man whose mother is vir¬ 
tuous and always has been. Blindly, insanely, Morris 
had struck at the heap of blackness until they had per¬ 
force to carry it to its shanty on the four-handed, wheel¬ 
less, carriage reserved at every mine for the injured and 
the dead. That had been but a short while before the 
strike over his own discharge. 

This fellow still lived in a shack Morris had passed 
near Calabrue’s with several of his kind. Three of them, 
sitting near the door hanging by one hinge of shoe 


In The Carbon Hills 


157 


leather, recognized their former foreman and called to 
him to share their liquor. He whom Morris had pum¬ 
melled at The Bffie leered wickedly without speaking, and 
turned with an oath to the other participants in the 
communal “jug.” All were much worse for drinking. 

In the face of more vital things the incident passed 
completely out of Morris’s mind as he neared Tirrel’s 
and the deep creek flowing gently between the low hills. 
It came suddenly to the surface when behind him, some¬ 
where in the darkness, he heard a footfall, hurried, un¬ 
certain, unsteady. Something living brushed his leg and 
he started suddenly, and involuntarily uttered an impre¬ 
cation cut short when his hand found the soft warm 
hide of Collson’s hound. 

“You old rascal, Pete!” he said, then, not ungladly: 
“Come on.” 

Morris and the dog had almost reached the fence 
which divides Tirrel’s garden from the creek when again 
there flooded through him the primordial dread of the 
animal of any species anent some unseen thing in a dark- 
encompassed place. For anyone to walk the uncertain, 
unpathed water-edge at that hour was very unusual. He 
stood and listened and the sound came nearer. He 
peered through the dark at the dog. Pete was alert but 
evidently hypnotized. He neither growled nor went 
cautiously forward as he generally did under similar cir¬ 
cumstances. Morris led the dog in courage. He started 
toward The Thing, but a crawly sensation went along 
his spine. He stopped after a short distance to listen. 
It was still coming. 

“It’s no doubt that miserable nigger,” he thought, and 
bent for a stone, a club, anything, and could find nothing. 
The Thing stumbled, evidently over a log, then rose and 
started back. 

“He’ll get a cold bath if he isn’t careful,” Morris 
soliloquized, still standing undecided as to the wisdom of 


158 


In The Carbon Hills 


calling or not. “If I do it may give him the chance he’s 
after, and if I don’t he’ll certainly get into the creek and 
drown and I’ll feel like a murderer. I’ll follow, anyhow.” 

He went upward along the path down which he had 
come. Hitherto his steps had been hushed by the grass, 
dead but quiet under the foot. They were no longer in¬ 
audible, and, covering the lesser sound, brought him 
within arm’s length of The Shadower before he was 
aware of any presence in that exact spot. Her face was 
just beyond the line of identity, but he knew the form. 
He grasped her arm roughly. 

“My God!” he exclaimed, “what brings you here and 
at such a time?” 

Elizabeth put her hand confidingly in his, and with the 
free one tapped the hound. 

“You bad old dog,” she said with a reprimand that 
was nearly all joy, “what made you run so far ahead of 
me? Didn’t you know I might have got lost?” 

Her words ended with a tiny burst of mirth at the re¬ 
mote possibility of such a contingency. 

“But he’s a dandy dog, isn’t he, Mr. Morris?” lifting 
her eyes to the tall form beside her. 

“You might have got drowned; I’m not interested in 
the dog,” Eldred brutally observed. Pride and dignity 
were strong yet, despite the girl’s first effort at compro¬ 
mise. He repeated his question, and asked her why she 
didn’t call. To the latter she explained that she wasn’t 
sure of his identity, having lost track of him once or 
twice on the way from the village, and she didn’t want 
to take any chances. To the first question she replied 
simply: 

“You.” 

“Me,” Morris interrogated; why me?” 

“The looks on your face when you passed me without 
speaking scared me. When you took your hat and coat 
from the rack something told me you were going to 


In The Carbon Hills 


159 


Colville, and I saw you take something like a revolver 
from the mantel that scared me still worse, and—and I 
didn’t want— 

Elizabeth’s voice broke, and her hand slipped to her 
own side. Circumstances adverse to him had not, it 
seemed, taken away all the tenderness she had for the 
wayward Colville youth. 

“You thought I was going to kill—to kill him!” the 
stronger voice rang out in the silence, “with a silver- 
plated pipe-case!" He took hold of her arm again. 
“Well, that’s a good one.” Then, suddenly stopping in 
the path, he loosed her arm as if it were hot iron, waiting 
in silent intimation for her to go on without him. But 
Elizabeth didn’t move nor speak. He broke the pause. 

“Then you still care for—er—for a thing like that? 
care for it so much you would try to stop it from get¬ 
ting what it deserves!” he spoke hurriedly, moving a 
step beyond her. The girl hung her head. 

“Perhaps he—perhaps Amos isn’t so bad as—as the 
letter makes him appear. The money—you know he 
might not know about it; besides, he’s been a creature 
of circumstances you-.” 

“A creature of—of hell,” the miner blurted, and as 
quickly begged Elizabeth’s pardon and softened his 
savage outburst by saying that different people of course 
had different ways of looking at things, “but if I had a 
sister I’d hate for her to—to think that way toward a 
man of that caliber.” 

And all the time Elizabeth remained silent under the 
incrimination and assumption, her tongue momentarily 
powerless to resist by lucidly explaining her attitude in 
that particular premise. Her head was bent while he 
poured out his vexation in bitterness. Once only she 
started to expostulate but his voice, stronger and louder 
with the stress of vehemence and emotion, overwhelmed 




160 In The Carbon Hills 

her murmuring of apology. He stopped at last, and she 
told him he did not understand. 

“I understand more of that case, and have understood 
longer, than you have any idea,” he insisted, “and I un¬ 
derstand all I want to know of it,” still wrongly attribut¬ 
ing her attitude to sheer obstinacy of nature and weak 
will, “and I think you had better let me walk ahead of 
you to see that you get home safely.” And suiting the 
action to the word Hldred Morris strode past her and 
onto the wider wagon-road leading thence past The Bffie 
to the village. In his heart he almost wished it had been 
the negro. 

Docilely Elizabeth followed. The old hound went be¬ 
tween them jogging sulkily, his shadow and theirs ly¬ 
ing, when the moon came out at intervals, plainly and 
obliquely across the road. Doubtless in his own doggish 
way Pete sensed an unusual difficulty, basing his canine 
hypothesis on the unnecessary amount of air space lying 
between the two young human forms. He could remem¬ 
ber when one chair had done for both, and thev had never 
exhibited any shame in his presence. And, wise in his 
dog days and generation, as became a good rabbit-hound 
and the favorite father of so many doggy daughters and 
sons living in Carbonia and its environs, Pete knew the 
ways of love were not all peace, as his own long, tooth- 
torn ears gave evidence, and an occasional predilection 
to the use of three legs instead of four. He respected 
these young people’s troubles accordingly. 

So in this manner man, maid and dog, came at last to 
the top of the hill. Obviously if there were going to be 
any talking done that night the girl had to do it. She 
was out of her element in such repellent attitude and 
silence; he was in his. But trust the girls to know how 
to bring the men across the line. 

As a starter Elizabeth took the shawl which had thus 
far covered her head and placed it over her shoulders, 


In The Carbon Hills 


161 


allowing it to drape becomingly in the most approved 
fashion. She not only looked better but she felt better, 
and to aid in a desirable consummation the moon came 
out between two cloud banks just as the man turned to 
see if the dog were in line. And for some reason (per¬ 
haps it was because of the coincidence or because it was 
one itself) the girl smiled back at the man in the moon 
as he lighted her features after the semi-gloom. That 
is a combination of circumstances no mere man of be¬ 
tween twenty and thirty could be blamed for capitulating 
to, particularly since Dame Nature, being a pretty 
shrewd tactician herself in such matters, is on the side 
of the enemy to further her own ends of preserving the 
species. 

Eldred Morris smiled and the war was ended. Eliza¬ 
beth added to that, which, in the moonlight made her 
look entirely ethereal, although of course she wasn’t, as 
we have John Morris’s word for it, but Eldred just then 
thought she was which amounted to the same thing. 
And Pete, glad of the change of atmosphere, liked the 
sense of warmth which floated back to him, and in joy¬ 
ful response wagged his long hound-tail. 

“You misjudged me, Eldred,” she said, again putting 
her hand on his arm. 

“I wasn’t judging you—but him . . .” 

“That isn’t what I mean then,” Elizabeth made an¬ 
other attempt. 

“Then please explain,” he suggested. 

So she did, which left Morris more in doubt than be¬ 
fore regarding life’s devious ways. Elizabeth ended: 
“And I was afraid you were going to shoot Amos, 
and-.” 

“That’s what you said before,” Morris broke in, “and 
I think just the same regarding it. Do you think a man 
that would let a girl like Esther end the way she has 
after he being the cause of her ruin deserves anything 



In The Carbon Hills 


162 

else? Do you think he’s worth the little finger of the 
woman he killed, Elizabeth? “If you do,” he added less 
vehemently, “your regard for him passes my under¬ 
standing. The fact that you made a fool's promise- 

Morris broke off suddenly and resumed his former for¬ 
bidding attitude, while Elizabeth still insisted he mis¬ 
construed her. 

“It wasn’t because—because I wanted—because I 
didn’t want you to do anything as bad as that,” she 
stammered, “I—it was because I didn't want them to 
hang youC she managed to blurt out at last with a little 
shudder of fear that shook the shawl from her petite 
shoulders, and-. 

But now, dear reader, what difference does it make to 
us what followed? Haven’t you in your time done the 
same? or if you haven’t at least we hope you have the 
most honorable and earnest intentions of so committing 
yourself soon ; indeed we do. 

And when it happen we hope the dog accompanying 
you and him will be a descendant of our own wise Car- 
bonian hound, and as shrewd in his day as Pete was in 
his. Nothing that had transpired thus far had escaped 
him; neither did this. That something out of the or¬ 
dinary was afoot was patent even to his doggish sense 
when young ladies—usually well dressed—failed to be 
solicitous of their apparel, and let their shawls fall un¬ 
heeded to the ground. So, considering the matter for a 
moment, Pete decided to stand guard that the shawl 
shouldn’t run away, which he may have mistaken as 
part of his usual police duty. 

“And what if I had intended to go there?” Eldred 
asked while setting the shawl in its correct place. 

“I intended to stop you,” Elizabeth whispered ever so 
bravely—now—looking up into the dark eyes which 
glinted beams of love above her, and presently smiled 
at the presumption. 




In The Carbon Hills 163 

“You!” he exclaimed, but derision had no part therein 
for love and joy had crowded it out. 

“Yes, I,” she explained, voice somewhat plaintive, sad, 
“for it could do no good, but much harm where there is 
already too much. You’re needed to do good, so am I,” 
she philosophied wisely, nestling close to him as they 
went slowly along the broad road, “all of us. I went in 
before I came here and—and told our people all about 
it,” she added cheerily, “and mamma she—and, but I’ve 
got a plan which we can all help in, regarding Esther’s 
baby and other matters,” she added definitely, having 
barely avoided the shoals and the mental ships she had 
witnessed in the brief space at home that night. We 
heard later through Sophy that Effie Wilkes had de¬ 
veloped some sort of acute indigestion which Hilman 
feared might turn to nervous prostration, and for some 
days no one was allowed to visit her room. But Time, 
which has a specific for mental wounds, healed Effie 
Wilkes’s, in what manner remains for other parts of 
this story to tell. 

There was quite an early convention at the big house 
next morning which ended in Elizabeth and Mary Mac¬ 
Donald starting for Pittsburg. Where there are ten or 
eleven one mite extra is scarcely noticed, but trouble 
only was to be the MacDonald’s portion. So far as 
money can assure the future of any child the future of 
Esther’s baby was assured. 

Evidently the parties having the child were only too 
glad to get rid of it, particularly to two rural ladies bear¬ 
ing such good credentials. Perhaps had their intentions 
been less honorable, their papers less perfect, the little 
foundling might have been as willingly turned over to 
their harsh or tender mercies? Let us hope not. Also 
let us pray that a humane people will always see to it 
that “The Will of God,” insofar as it concerns adding to 
the punishment already endured in unwilling entrance 


164 


In The Carbon Hills 


upon such unfortunate premise, may not be construed 
as sanction to thrust such dear, tiny, helpless little boys 
and girls, against whom neither God nor Man may lay 
crime other than that of being unwillingly born, like 
mongrel puppies into indiscriminate hands. 

For twenty-four hours everyone interested stood on the 
tip-toe of expectancy. We were talking of it on the 
steps of the big house when Wilkes first descried the 
two women coming along the path this side of Cala- 
brue’s. They walked from the station, because we could 
not be sure which train they would come on. Elizabeth’s 
hat was, as we saw when she came nearer, nearer her 
shoulder than her head, the living bundle lying snuggled 
tightly against the virginal breast. Mary MacDonald, 
to whom that phase of human labor had grown trite, was 
content to let the younger woman act the matron for 
that day at least. 

And, as we have seen many a happy mother in play 
with her own, the girl’s hair was tousled by the strong 
wind, but she came on joyfully regardless, trying to lift 
the long end of the shawl enwrapping the baby in greet¬ 
ing to us at the house. Roger Wilkes’s eyes were moist 
and his voice tremulous as he turned to Turley and said : 

“She’ll make a fine mother to her own, someday, I 

hope, Sam, but not to a Rummel-never! No, not for 

a thousand mines !!” 

The one time miner shivered, whether in contempla¬ 
tion of the possibilities just escaped as by a miracle or 
with the cold one may only assume. “God,” he said, 
yet he spoke to Turley, “that was a close shave for my 
girl, and we’ll find someway out without— that —you 
bet . . . 

******** 

A number of circumstances combined to bring about 
a realization of that prophecy, not the least among them 
the fact that The United States was emerging from 



In The Carbon Hills 165 

chaotic panic into excited prosperity for some at least. 
The mining investment pendulum swung from one ex¬ 
treme to the other. Through a maze of detail and in¬ 
vestigations, and options, and what not, which we re¬ 
frain from inflicting on the reader, The Bffie came eventu¬ 
ally into its own as the largest of a string of mines owned 
by a stock company of which in the end Roger became 
President, and, following his graduation as Mining En¬ 
gineer, Eldred Morris was given the position as General 
Superintendent or General Manager, as you please, and 
Chief Mining Engineer, please you or no. 

These Morris was in fact as well as name, and was 
determined to become such before offering Elizabeth 
Wilkes his name. We may assume that Mrs. Effie’s 
attitude following the incidents just related had not a 
little to do with this decision on the part of Eldred and 
Elizabeth. And while the latter was eagerly and per¬ 
sistently endeavoring to obtain her own degree, with 
much detriment to her health in the later months, the 
new General Superintendent of The Wilkes Coal Com¬ 
pany took advantage of almost unlimited opportunity to 
change, as fast as was possible for him so to do, many 
ills which had previously borne heavily, sometimes on 
employer and employee alike. In the meantime the 
company’s activities extended to a recently purchased 
mine in an adjoining state whence followed not only 
some of our officials but at least a few of our men. And 
since what happened there is also part of this history we 
also must follow them. 


CHAPTER XIX. 

WHERE AMERICANS ARE FOREIGNERS IN THEIR 

OWN LAND 

From Carbonia to The Elkhorn is a goodly step, but 
the miner, ever seeking a better berth, travels in seven- 
league boots. To the newly-acquired mine in West Vir¬ 
ginia Eldred Morris traveled when occasion demanded or 
opportunity offered, just as MacDonald had been sent 
before to act as superintendent of the latest acquisition, 
because “Miner and Shipper" and mere “Miner" seek 
the same end by different means. 

MacDonald’s family had not yet gone for reasons 
later mentioned; a few of Carbonia's people had for 
reasons already mentioned: to escape a crowded mine 
in Pennsylvania to get into a still worse mess in an¬ 
other state by the same cause. For the good mine— 
where Nature has dealt delightfully in the way of an 
easily-procured and thick vein and dry, is, paradoxically, 
quite often the poorest for making money, except in 
certain cases where unlimited cars are provided certain 
men : “free turn" the miner calls it when he doesn’t call 
it something worse. The latter depends of course wheth¬ 
er he’s a Dominic or a Pietrecco. 

Thus, even prosperity has its lights and shadows, as 
Charles and Margaret Farley found when the former, 
tired of much shoveling and small pay as boiler-fireman, 
left the company’s old mine for the newly-purchased one 
in another field. Also other unexpected things which 
we must now relate, not the least from Margaret’s point 
of view being the difference in environment, in people, 
and the houses themselves. 

166 


In The Carbon Hills 


16 7 


As her husband and the euphonious Clifford Adams 
and young wife had done Margaret had voluntarily taken 
pot-luck despite partly pessimistic letters coming from 
The Elkhorn to our village. A gleam of prospective bet¬ 
terment shone through the gloom—lighted as much by 
a woman’s love as the information conveyed in crude 
spelling that the vein there was of extraordinary thick¬ 
ness and excellence, the combination needing only suf¬ 
ficient rolling-stock supplied to each miner to assure him 
pay of unusual bulk. Yet this latter not as yet forth¬ 
coming Farley urged Margaret to stay a while in the 
vine-clad cottage of the crippled Thomas near our vil¬ 
lage, with the babe recently born to them. 

“The houses here is worse than the bachin shanties at 
Carboneyer,” and more awful things he told her. But 
the womanly imagination leaped the wooded hills and 
rested on the lone “batcher'’ on The Lick Branch, and 
her heart grew hungry for the young miner she had ever 
loved else she had not married him when her choice had 
been profuse, taking in the now General Superintendent 
and Chief Engineer himself—almost. 

Thus she wrote, and he answered that his choice was 
limited to one house, all the others, poor as they were, 
being occupied. In his own way he described it and its 
environment. She didn’t care. “Take it if it’s built right 
over a coke oven,” she said, and meant it. 

It wasn’t exactly as bad as that, but pretty nearly in 
location at least. And in every way it was a poor one 
compared with what the young Carbonian matron had 
been used to, dirty and smelly of its former un-American 
occupants. Margaret soon transformed that part of it. 
A week after her furniture got there the inside was 
cheerful with red-and-white table-cloth and polished 
stove, and a floor uncarpeted except the “best” room, 
so clean that being hungry enough one could have eaten 
from it without repugnance. 


In The Carbon Hills 


168 

There Margaret’s efforts ended. For the rest it was 
much drafty in the wrong places, and the raw winds of 
even a West Virginian Autumn swirled coldly along the 
Elkhorn and whipped savagely into The Lick. Also it 
was dark, this branch, so narrow the space eroded at this 
point that scarce a hundred yards lay between the vary¬ 
ing base lines. The view from the windows encompass¬ 
ed an unlovely tipple and the inevitable string of railroad 
cars. 

And if at night you sat with wife and child on the 
stoop the wind would smother you with sulphuric fumes 
from the “bee-hive” coke ovens near the railroad, and 
send you indoors coughing. The negro and the “guinny” 
are easily satisfied, and the coal trade deals harshly with 
employer as well as employee at times, urging the place 
of utmost economy as the best. If the village at the 
new mine bought by The Wilkes Company were any 
criterion times must have been indeed cruelly unkind to 
the employer when homes were set there for the men. 
Of course there is always this consolation : if the Amer¬ 
ican or Anglo-Saxon miner do not like it he has the 
constitutional right to stay away, or, if there, to leave. 
And to the eternal credit of that related tribe be it said 
that they generally do, if not officials. In that case 
their lot is better. 

******** 

In their new environment Charles and Margaret Farley 
were “outlanders.” They were native Americans for¬ 
eigners in their own land. He did not agree with his 
labor, or the lack of it, to be more precise. The eternal 
gamble of the miner was going against him. With the 
exception of Minnie Adams, who lived at the farther end 
of the row, Margaret did not like her neighbors. But 
both in houses and work Clifford Adams was more for¬ 
tunate than the later arrival from Carbonia. He was a 
driver, hence sure of a full day’s pay when the mine 


In The Carbon Hills 


169 


worked. But Margaret and Farley had each other and 
the baby, and where love is there optimism regarding 
the future is never quite dead. 

The child's coming had been eagerly welcomed, but 
the incident and its result increased the balance against 
the miner at a time when he could ill afford the burden, 
for the fact that the doctor’s service at Carbonia was 
covered by a nominal monthly fee, small indeed com¬ 
pared with its benefits, was to a large extent nullified 
by after events. Farley’s rating at the company-store 
which, with its stock of all kinds of things needed by 
the miners, was part of the property when The Wilkes 
Company took possession, was decidedly low. As day 
followed day with no immediate prospect of betterment 
the miner chafed in his working-place, and quite often 
suggested a move. 

“We’re runnin’ the line dost to the limit,” he told her, 
then, with a faint hope, “but I heered young Morris is 
expectin’ to come an’ it’ll maybe be better after; he’s to 
be here soon. As it is they’s lots of the diggers as is 
worse off than us a lot. Some of ’em cant get a sack of 
flour if they was dyin’ fer it until they get a car to load. 
They’ll foller it out in a pinch, then after it’s dumped 
get it in grub. They’n sure to be in again time enough 
fer the next. We aint come to that yit, but-.” 

The abstract weighed heavily on Farley. He sensed 
its possibilities to the little family in a strange land; 
Margaret did not. Her chief concern lay in her lap, and 
the weather was cold. She snuggled the little lad close 
to her breast and suggested that they try to hold out 
“Till Spring comes, anyway.” 

They waited, but in such a house even the warmth of 
mother-love and lots of coal did not keep the child from 
getting pneumonia. They weathered that storm and the 
boy lived, but there were times before it was over when 
the miner-father would have bartered part of his life- 



170 


In The Carbon Hills 


blood for thing's they needed and could not get had any¬ 
one desired the exchange. There wasn’t then; there was 
later. 

Following the illness Margaret’s boy didn’t thrive as 
well as he had done before. From a small country town 
some miles away came the doctor with the suggestion 
that it “might possibly be that the peculiar atmosphere in¬ 
cidental to a deep, narrow, valley filled with coke-ovens 
always burning had something to do with it.’’ 

“ ‘Peculiar atmosphere’ is th’ only thing there’s plenty 
of round here, an’ niggers an’ guinnies,’’ the miner mim¬ 
icked the doctor aside to Margaret, after having told the 
former he could not pay him for the visit just then. “If 
we only had what was throwed away at that fool chris¬ 
tenin’ in the top block yisterday ... if we only had 
. . .’’ the man’s mind retaining unspoken comparisons 

odious and tormenting—to him. Nor did they illume 
for this unsophisticated American toiler the secret of 
“guinny’’ living and thriving on what he and Margaret 
and the baby would starve. 

In December the child grew decidedly worse, and the 
parents were under necessity of procuring medical at¬ 
tention again. The sense of security this trip gave to the 
father and mother was well worth the cost. Their baby 
boy was in no danger, but the doctor suggested that he 
be immediately weaned. Also that his mother’s milk be 
replaced by a certain food procurable—so he was pleased 
to advise—at the company’s store lower down the ra¬ 
vine. Casually he stated its price, and wondered at the 
sudden change of color in Margaret’s face: change from 
pink and white to white without pink. Wrongly at¬ 
tributing he referred directly but delicately to his sur¬ 
mise with regard to her condition, which promptly 
brought the colors trooping to their accustomed place 
in the young matron’s cheeks. 

After that Farley’s desire to earn a sufficing wage grew 


In The Carbon Hills 


171 

poignant to the point of desperation. For hours he 
would sit where the pit-wagon road passed his chamber, 
reiterating with pitiful monotony the eternal question of 
the larger, more easily-procured vein: 

“Car fer me this time, Cliff?” Then, on the mule- 
driver’s return down the heading: “Car next time, 
Adams?” 

And as the day waned and the driver's nonchalant 
“No” became a bored headshake Farley's aggressive, in¬ 
dependent, spirit of the morning waned with it, fading 
at length almost to an apeak Then in the reaction came 
to his young eyes a wicked, reckless, gleam: the subtle 
sign of something overwhelming enough to grapple with 
man, death or the devil if the wrestling with either meant 
an extra dollar for the woman and the child in the house 
across the narrow creek. 

When night came Margaret from her window could 
tell almost without fail good news from bad by his drag¬ 
ging step or agile. Strange, too ,the harder had been 
the toil the more spring in his step: outward sign of in¬ 
ward exultation over this glorious American privilege of 
simply having all the work desired. On such days the 
elation of spirit made the strides fewer in reaching home. 


CHAPTER XX. 


LAWS POLYMORPHIC 

As the holiday month came toward its closing days 
each miner took the utmost of his toll. That man had to 
be very ill indeed who allowed a car to pass him un¬ 
claimed during that pay which was for Christmas dis¬ 
bursement. Farley’s steps grew heavier. Each night 
he and Margaret deducted from his total due that which 
the company would do for him in reality later on: 
“House rent,” “Powder,” “Oil,” “Blacksmithing,” “Sun¬ 
dries,” which latter included the sack of flour and the 
box of matches. And in spite of the most rigorous econ¬ 
omy on the part of Margaret the family account was still 
such as to preclude all possibility of obtaining the desired 
preparation for the child. 

When one’s pay was overdrawn the veriest trifle from 
the drug department was not among the permissibles 
allowed by the genial storekeeper. 

“The company draws the line on fancy grub for the 
kid,” he advised said “kid's” father with a placidity en¬ 
gendered by frequent repetition along several lines. And 
after Farley had explained he was a little more explicit 
but quite as obdurate. 

“Guess that's what helped bust the other company up 
. . . we can’t think of it for a minute. But,” after 

a moment’s consideration, “if youns know the new man¬ 
ager when he comes he might—what he says goes.” 

That was poor consolation for Farley, and he per¬ 
sisted in thinking of it before Morris came, seeing his 
little one getting thinner every day when he should have 

172 


In The Carbon Hills 


173 


been taking on baby flesh. In the end he compromised 
by depriving himself of the food essential to a physical 
worker. Margaret he would not allow to economize. 

“If the baby’s weaned you’ve still got two to feed,” he 
iterated the doctor sagely, meanwhile remarking with a 
sad pleasure the mother’s eyes dance with an altogether 
unalloyed anticipation, her cheeks the color of a pink 
peony. 

Already they called it a girl. It should be Little Mar¬ 
garet, just as the boy was Little Charley. 

“An’ we want ’em both, don’t we Maggie?” he asked 
her, and her eyes and smiling face affirmed his question. 
Then, looking where she looked, upon the living com¬ 
posite of her own fairness and his, a sudden stress of 
passionate emotion seized him, and with his two cal¬ 
loused hands on her fair cheeks he bent back her head 
and kissed her. 

For them this was the only way. From their parents 
these two simple lovers learned to expect and acquiesce 
in sacrifices in the raising of future Americans, and to 
be calmly heroic without hope of State or National re¬ 
ward or any plaudits of the multitude. Neither in their 
remote state knew they aught of uptilted noses and ut¬ 
tered contempt. In Eden they have not yet learned the 
paradoxical secret of taking life and keeping it: Mother¬ 
hood is not passing into desuetude: the great tragedies 
of life are fairly met. Charles Farley gave of his strength 
much he could ill spare that the children of his loins and 
hers might live and thrive. And he grew keener as he 
grew thin, with an increase in the primal instinct of the 
male in search of food for its offspring. 

So Christmas passed. The new mine of The Wilkes 
Coal Company had been idle for the holiday, but quickly 
resumed after. 

“There’s sure ter be a good day ter-morrer; the nig¬ 
gers an‘ the guinnies is still a-boozin’, an’ MacDonald’s 


l 7 4 


In The Carbon Hills 


had the pit-boss give me a better place,” the miner calm¬ 
ly adduced as the tag-end of much news brought up with 
the mail from the store. “Mac’s expectin’ Morris any 
time now, an’ he thinks it’ll be better after he comes this 
time.” 

Margaret sat reading a late copy of Colville Weekly 
Nezvs which the home folks had sent with a few presents 
just as welcome as if on time. In the familiar sheet were 
the weekly budget of Carbonia’s news and the disserta¬ 
tions of local conditions from all the surrounding coun¬ 
try. Specifically of interest to Margaret was the state¬ 
ment that Uncle Enoch Collson was laid up temporarily 
with an attack of “wheezles,” a Carbonian synonym for 
miner’s asthma, and that John Morris and wife Emily 
expected to eat Christmas dinner at Mary MacDonald’s 
in Colville. To this latter was appended a semi-facetious 
suggestion of the corresponding book-keeper at The Bffie, 
preceded by the statement that Mrs. MacDonald expect¬ 
ed to join her husband in the South as soon as she gained 
strength after the coming of this latest brother of Bob¬ 
bie Burns. 

“This being the twelfth or thirteenth young citizen 
given by Mr. and Mrs. MacDonald to Colville and Vi¬ 
cinity, we would suggest that an appropriate apprecia¬ 
tion of this fact could be well shown by our General 
Manager transferring our friend Mac’s superintendency 
from the wilds of Virginia to that position soon to be 
vacated by Mr. Turley, who it is expected will look after 
the surface alone, and leave a younger man take care of 
the underground affairs.” 

Obviously the article was inspired, for it continued: 

“School facilities are a vital concern to a family like 
Superintendent MacDonald’s, and we hear Carbonia will 
soon have one equal almost to Colville if The General 
Manager’s plans carry.” 

Followed the information that Mr. and Mrs. Roger 


In The Carbon Hills 


175 


Wilkes were entertaining Mrs. Wilkes’s brother and 
wife, but that the festivities were dimmed somewhat no 
doubt by the fact of Miss Elizabeth still being away. 
Then came the news of a fatal accident at The Effie, fol¬ 
lowed immediately by the tidbit of rumor delectable even 
in the Land of Coal, to the effect that if all was true that 
one heard in Carbonia and Colville wedding bells were to 
ring shortly after Miss Elizabeth returned from a world 
. tour with a party of friends from Colville. This latter, 
it stated for the benefit of those who might not be con¬ 
versant with the facts, had been undertaken, on the advice 
of a specialist, after her graduation,” and interested Mar¬ 
garet so she had to ask her husband to repeat what he 
had said. 

Farley was smoking, his feet propped against the fire¬ 
place. The baby was asleep. Feeling in his pockets for 
a match he yawned, stretched his long arms up to the 
ceiling as he rose languidly, and said he guessed he’d go 
in and try the new place by getting a string of holes 
ready. Instead of this being the news she asked it was 
the tail-end and result of what she had not heard. The 
miner said it as a man does to whom the idea comes after 
much pondering over the thing one is about to do. But 
he tried to hide this from Margaret and spoke firmly, as 
one not afraid. 

‘‘There’ll be lots o’ cars ter-morrer, sure,” he gave as 
his belief the second time, “an’ I can shoot ’em without 

diggin’ if I have ’em ready.” 

Margaret turned to him, languidly differing with his 
intent. Her eyes looked up into his searchingly and saw 
only determination. 

“Charley,” she said, “aint you afraid? you know the 
laws says that aint allowed.” The Mining Code had no 


/ 


176 In The Carbon Hills 

state lines in Margaret’s mind. She referred to Penn¬ 
sylvania.* 

The man laughed, a low, contemptuous chuckle, and, 
setting his pipe down again raised his clenched fists to 
the once white-washed and now nondescript-colored 
boards above. He let them fall to his sides with a re¬ 
laxed sigh. 

“I hate it worse’n hell at night: wisht I’d knowed 
sooner, I’d done it yisterday if it was Christmas. I’d 
rather sleep.” 

In a moment he had changed shirts and was slipping 
off his trousers when the protective instinct of the 
woman urged her to suggest caution. 

“You might get sent up, Charley, like them men young 
Morris sent to Little Washington for solid-shootin’?” 

The sentence was uttered tentatively; the answer terse 
and final and a challenge to laws obnoxious. “The hell!” 
he said. 

Slipping on his overalls he continued: “They’d better 
mind it themsel’s first . . . an’ not wink at comp’ny 
men breakin’ it when it pays . . . An’ that’s a fac’, 
Maggie,” he persisted in face of her doubt. “An’ anyway 
the pit-boss can’t be lookin’ after every shot as is fired, 
an’ the state inspector don’t come round on’y about every 
three months unless somebody’s killed.” 

“Well, you’d think they’d be smarter an’ get one for 
each mine or two,” Margaret suggested philosophically, 
hugging the baby to her breast and rocking it to and fro. 

“Cost too much,” came the laconic answer, as Farley 
bent under a part of the stairs forming something like 
a little closet. 

“As much as the men that’s left to do as they’ve a 

♦West Virginia has quite as good laws now: it had not 
then. They were broken as readily, however, where they were 
actually on the statutes as where only existing in Margaret 
Farley’s mind. 



In The Carbon Hills 


177 


mind an' gets killed a-doin’ it, Charley?” Margaret look¬ 
ed into the fire-place, seeing pictures in the coals of 
tragedy known and expected. 

“Yes, lots more,” the miner responded, slipping a black 
steel keg behind the door ready to pick up when he 
should leave. “They don’t cost the comp’ny nothin’—yit; 
it’s on’y the widders an’ kids as cost—somebody. But 
p’rhaps the state’ll do like Jack Morris says someday, 
Maggie, make it cheaper to keep ’em alive to work than 
to kill ’em,” and his voice rang with a laugh that sent 
shivers of dread anticipation down Margaret’s spine. 

“But-” Farley snapped his words short and stopped 

at that. 

“What?” his wife insisted. 

The miner proceeded to fill his oil-bottle in silence. 

“Nothin’,” he snapped, and thrust the greasy vessel in¬ 
to a still greasier pocket. He lighted his lamp and lift¬ 
ed the powder-keg beneath his arm. The twenty-five 
pounds of dry deadly grains rattled ominously within the 
thin fluted steel, and drew the woman’s notice to this 
second infraction her husband intended. She spoke 
mildly. 

“Are you goin’ to do that, too, Charley?” 

“Why not?” the black eyes flashed; “this aint TW Bffie. 
I seen the comp’ny men with four or five of ’em at the 
partin’ tother day, an’ half a box o’ dynamite with caps 
an’ fuse in the same box an’ all of it in the pit-car with 
the men . . . goin’ to that new partin’ they’n shoot- 

in’ down.” 

Margaret said no more; neither do we. Why, indeed, 
should not she and Farley take when they could a share 
in the illegal spoils? They needed it worse than many 
who did. If an explosion—dust or gas—should by any 
chance occur, the “doctors” would inevitably disagree 
and, the patients being dead, none refute. “Atmospheric 
changes” sounds more technical than “criminal careless- 



178 


In The Carbon Hills 


ness” and is more misleading to The Public than the lat¬ 
ter, which is fortunate indeed since it is The Public on 
whom—compensation or no compensation—the ultimate 
burden must fall. Find yourself in a quandary to explain 
criminal disobedience or criminal carelessness in a way 
to leave you foot-free, inject into the average jury (which 
doesn’t know even which of carbonic acid or marsh gas¬ 
es explodes) testimony utterly abstract and bewildering 
and they be glad to let it go at that and forget all about 
the protective rider they had intended to insert. 

“Well, be careful, Charley,” Margaret admonished, 
just as she had done each time Farley left her for the 
mine since their marriage. And quite as perfunctorily 
the miner answered with a smile: 

“I will, Maggie; you take care of yourself.’' 

He bent to kiss her before going, then went to the 
parlor, if one may term it such, to kiss the baby now 
sleeping in the parental bed. The downstairs had to 
serve for bedroom also, since that bearing the name up¬ 
stairs was uninhabitable for a dog in Winter. Return¬ 
ing, Farley stood undecided for a moment with his hand 
still on the door-knob, and both broke into a smile at this 
open exhibition of the conflict going on within him. But 
it was only regarding one thing: 

“I wisht I’d known,” he said again ; “I hate it worse’n 
hell at night; I'd ruther sleep,” his thin lips compressed 
as he went out into the dark. 

“I'll bet he would,” Margaret’s face lighted with ten¬ 
derness and solicitation. She listened until she heard 
his footsteps crossing the planks across the narrow 
creek flowing down the narrow valley-bottom. Then 
she undressed and went to bed with his son. 


CHAPTER XXI. 

AND LAW THAT IS NOT 

Farley returned about three and went in again with 
the first driver. It was futile to go in before else he 
would have remained in all night. All he could do 
without empty wagons was done, according to the lo¬ 
cally-accepted rule and against The Mine Laws as 
Farley and almost every American miner at least knows 
them to be either expressed or implied: tentative or 
existing. On the wall, framed and in a glass, he had 
read many a time at The Bffie : “The miner shall properly 
undermine his coal, and shall use care where and how he 
places his shots . . Farley had done this latter 

in six holes out of seven, which is a fair record. The 
former he had not done at all. 

In each of these holes, or such of them as he might 
need, he had anticipated the need of considerable 
powder, which he would insert as each preceding shot 
was cleaned up. This, obviously, could be at best but 
an approximate estimate of the need. Some trivial 
change in the direction of the bore which might in all 
likelihood be overlooked by the miner busied with load¬ 
ing, shooting, and a hundred other matters, might tear 
today to smithereens, and send a shower of roaring, 
crashing, coal like ten thousand grape-shot into the open 
places, that which but yesterday under similar circum¬ 
stances (apparently) pushed the black layer gently out 
as you would your piano from the wall. Or, happen the 
boring moved to right or left, the result would be, per¬ 
haps, a hole like a huge horizontal pot and a deafening 
concussion, but no coal to load for your pains! 

179 


180 In The Carbon Hills 

These miniature explosions of course lift trillions of 
carbon atoms from the mine-floor, dry and dusty to ex¬ 
cessiveness, and set them floating in the moving air. An 
unpropitious circumstance in the form of fire projected 
into the mass from some source at the proper moment 
and the mass burns like so much powder. 

Farley saw none of these possibilities. Like death such 
things always somehow just missed you and struck your 
neighbor. What was concrete to the miner was the 
empty wagon coming as fast as he could by the most 
rapid work fill it! That was positive; the other possible 
only. He worked feverishly as a dififerent miner coming 
suddenly onto a rich pocket of gold nuggets. And each 
car to Farley was worth almost a little one. 

He worked as one does who finds he has but so long in 
which to “make his stake.” Twice he had fired, and 
twice without unusual incident the explosive had splen¬ 
didly pushed the little hill of loose coal ready for his 
shovel to transfer to the car. The nearest fresh air pass¬ 
ing him was some thirty feet away. The intervening 
space was filled with a stifling mixture of smoke from 
his lamp and shots. In this Farley’s light swung on his 
cap like a dark red ball after each firing, his figure utterly 
obliterated in the thick fog. 

As he worked his broad-bladed shovel would fan some 
of it out, and leave him, ultimately, just barely discern¬ 
ible from the roadway along which the driver hauled his 
cars. Then another shot would thicken it all over again. 
******** 

When noon came Farley held pie with one hand and 
threw lumps of coal into the drummy bottom of the car 
with the other. He was weaker than usual but not 
hungry, therefore he ate only that part of his dinner 
which aggravated his disorder. About an hour before 
dinner a violent headache set in and swept the usually 
keen appetite away. Dusty, smoke-begrimed, as an old- 
time cannoneer, he toiled and sweated, his lungs smart- 


In The Carbon Hills 181 

ing with irritation due to the foul pungency. Through 
it all he never once thought of stopping, for each hour 
meant another dollar for Margaret and the boy. 

During the waning afternoon he often grew thirsty, a 
contingency provided for by Margaret out of much past 
experience with her brothers. This desire for cold, weak, 
tea took him back to his tool-box snuggled against the 
coal pillar protecting the heading. On a flat stone near 
the box, but still closer the wooden-rail track leading 
from the heading to the room-face, lay two brass checks. 
Ten he had placed there in the morning! He had still 
time to fire and possibly fill out another shot, which, 
granting him luck, would use up the remaining checks 
and make a record the greatest by three times of any he 
had reached since coming here. 

A fleeting picture crossed his mental vision, and a 
warm thrill went through him. Wouldn’t home and 
Margaret and the boy be a gladsome combination that 
night! Then the thought: “The niggers an’ the guin- 
nies—most of ’em’ll be in ter-morrer, an’ all the cars I’ll 
get’ll be one an’ maybe none.” 

It had about the same effect on Farley as a cold wet 
blanket dabbed suddenly on a fevered back. He dropped 
the top section of his pail awry across the bottom, raised 
the lid of his box for wrapping paper, rolled a cartridge 
on a long, round stick, tucked in one end and sought the 
powder. He wrenched off the small tin disc covering 
the outlet in the keg—his regular five-pound can being 
empty. Finger crooked in the hole he lifted it to his 
knee and poured the paper full. Then another and yet 
another and all the time his naked light swung on his 
cap above the black stream of death flowing with a 
grainy-rattle into the paper. The possibility of a spark 
dropping but lent zest and hurry to the operation. He 
knew The Law, fof had he not often read in large print 
placed carefully behind the glass at The Bffie: 


In The Carbon Hills 


182 

“Where naked lights are used the miner shall place 
his lamp not less than four feet from . . . with flame 

blowing away . . 

Farley stopped for a moment and listened, but with¬ 
out regard to Laws that bloom not to wholesome fruit 
behind glass alone. The wagons were coming behind 
the long chain-pillars in the distance. He hurried the 
preliminaries of blasting. By the time he had the shot 
ready Adams would be shouting for him to come. He 
set down the keg, not appreciably lighter than when he 
took it up, forgetting to replace the stopper. It stood 
directly in the line of fire. 

Up at the face he rammed the powder home, thrust 
into it the iron “needle/’ With one hand swinging the 
tamper he used the other to throw slack into the hole 
with a precision gained only by much practice. This fin¬ 
ished, he flung the bar back along the rib and from be¬ 
hind his ear pulled a squib. The rumble in the heading 
ceased and a voice at the opening called: 

“Here’s a car, Duck!” 

He answered: “Alright, Cliff!" at the same moment 
lifting from his cap the naked light and touched its hazy 
flame to the wax-like sulphur. Then he ran, calling as he 
went the miner’s warning when a shot is lit: 

“Fire!!” 

Farley lighted the squib short to gain the explosion 
sooner and thereby facilitate the car’s loading, turned an 

abrupt corner and-waited. 

******** 

In his haste Farley had leaned the bore too far into the 
solid coal. The State had not yet at that mine placed 
responsible men to do that work alone and unhurried by 
aught else. Neither had the new company got around 
to that mine yet in that respect as Morris had sometime 
before done at The Bffie . All such vital reforms were of 
course a matter of contemplation. Eldred Morris’s pro¬ 
spective trip had many such changes in view, but Fate 



In The Carbon Hills 183 

awaits no man’s opportunity, since it carries out its own 
purposes strictly on time. 

The width of coal at the back of Farley's shot was 
more than at the front, and the amount of powder meas¬ 
ured accordingly. Under such circumstances it is pos¬ 
sible no amount of explosive would have done other than 
this did: repulse its burden by blowing out (the “blown- 
out shot” so frequently mentioned in newspapers follow¬ 
ing explosions) and tearing as it came the coal along the 
drill-hole. Perhaps in the full length of it there would be 
loosened a bushel or two of atomic carbon, the whole 
transformed by the ignited powder into a whizzing, siz¬ 
zling, mass, cleaving the blackness before it, and forcing 
open heavy doors hundreds of yards away, with a detona¬ 
tion in that narrow space straining the ear-drums to 
the point of fracture. 

Its first single note was like a monster rifle-crack, high- 
scaled, its fiery tongue leaping in search of food. In the 
open keg it found it, even as it had found more between 
the face and the box in the form of dust. Then on it went 
rioting in an ocean of black atoms, its slurring unsated 
cadences bellowing into the longer stretches of open 
work, quivering, rising, ever searching with demoniacal 
hiss as it found food to the right, dying with a deep 
low woof!—woof!! as it ate the last vestige of oxygen 
in the abandoned workings to the left. 

And with a ten-fold furnace glare it lighted the great 
open places made by gravitation with a death-brilliance 
weird as intensest hell, rolling on and on in huge red¬ 
dish-black billows of flame, forced now by its own ex¬ 
pansion on the interior to seek a larger place in the 
greater world, leaving its “farewell” with each under¬ 
ground subject loyal or disloyal, obedient or disobedient 
alike, in the cruel mark of The Greater Law, without 
mercy as to ignorance, without cruelty as to intent 
. . . It is The Law . . . The Law must be ful¬ 

filled! and, knowing this, when will men learn? 


CHAPTER XXII. 


THE CALVARY OF COAL-LAND 


Margaret had coaxed and sugar-tittied the child to 
sleep. It was three o’clock and Farley would soon be 
home, perhaps. The comparative security of early Amer¬ 
ican mining life was receiving here and there rude shocks 
of awakening which threatened to break its defences be¬ 
yond remedy if the dread thing continued. Thousands 
of sensitive hearts leaped at every unusual sound. The 
immunity of even the non-gaseous mine had been ques¬ 
tioned of late by The Administrator of The Greater Law. 
Equally with their sisters in Pennsylvania the women 
of The Lower Field were wearing under this double 
burden of Nature’s wrath against disobedience and their 
own’s carelessness.* 

For our men it is soon over. For our wives and moth¬ 
ers, our sisters and our sweethearts, the poignant fear 
is ever present. Beneath an optimism, without which 
they would sink utterly beneath the burden, the ineffable 
dread tears at their tender hearts. And the administra¬ 
tion here is quite as impartial as underground. Dread, 
like his brother Death, takes no heed of velour and bric- 

*The period covered by our story was the most agonizing 
ever experienced in American mining, or any other. Disaster 
followed disaster in horrifying frequency, taking as toll in each 
case from a few lives to hundreds. Harwich, Darr, Monogah, 
Marianna are but a few instances of this black era in American 
mining history. Yet, happy we are to state that these thousands 
of strong men did not give their lives in vain. Public Opinion— 
ever the most potent factor in reform—aided men of Eldred 
and John Morris’s type to bring about the comparative safety 
our men enjoy today. Explosions grow less and less frequent. 

184 



In The Carbon Hills 185 

a-brac. The feminine heart covered by crepe de chine 
flutters similarly and from similar cause as that beneath 
cheap percale. 

Margaret started supper’s preparation. In a few min¬ 
utes she placed a pan of potatoes in the hot oven. At 
varying intervals during the afternoon her eyes sought 
the tipple and the crossing across the creek. 

It was with an eager curiosity she saw General Man¬ 
ager Morris come from the mine accompanied by Super¬ 
intendent MacDonald, and recalled with pardonable pride 
one night in the hall at Carbonia when, to the tune of 
“The Devil’s Dream” and “Money Musk,” played in 
medley on Donald’s fiddle, she had held the now General 
Manager’s hand and he her waist, and said that which 
made her heart beat high. 

She had watched him tack up a paper on the pit-mouth, 
which, could she have read from that distance she would 
have found very much like one he had affixed on the most 
public place at The Bffie, stating, briefly, that from thence¬ 
forward only sufficient men would be kept to fill the 
contract, and those preferably English-speaking and mar¬ 
ried. This, he hoped, would give all who lived in the 
hamlet a living wage. It referred also to certain danger¬ 
ous conditions which a special corps of men would be 
employed to overcome, insofar as possible, by examining 
and firing all shots and wetting the places beforehand, 
and other matters looking to the safety of the men and 
the happiness of their families. 

Margaret eyed him closely as he and MacDonald 
passed almost by her window. Thence they went up the 
hillside along a path ending at a far more beautiful and 
healthful home than Margaret’s, soon to be occupied by 
Mrs. MacDonald, it was thought. When she turned to 
the oven a shadow of tiniest regret flickered across her 
face, but only for a moment. She sought her baby and 
nearly killed him in the squeezing iteration that she was 


In The Carbon Hills 


186 

satisfied, and envied no other woman on earth. Then 
again she sought the window and looked up toward the 
mine. Men came out but none of them her own. 

Love is not blind always. Even at that distance Mar¬ 
garet could easily distinguish her husband from his fel¬ 
lows, although many of the American type were alike as 
two-year-old hickorys. She waited, since there was noth¬ 
ing else to do, her loving heart a-flutter with anticipation 
of a good day for Farley. 

She flew to the little cupboard and took out a tiny 
roast. This she set to share the heat with the pan of 
potatoes. A few minutes later the room was redolent 
with the odor of her cooking, and Margaret was standing 
with eyes set on the path down which Farley would 
come. 

Perhaps an hour later she had placed the meat and 
potatoes on the back of her stove to keep warm. Farley 
was over-long that night, which added positiveness to 
mere assumption regarding the amount he would have 
earned. Yet as the minutes passed the mild anxiety 
grew a little. He might be the only man in a long 
stretch of workings. A fall of slate might have pinned 
him to the mine floor and he calling right then for help 
which came not. Perhaps he had started out and got 
in the dark, and, finding his matches all gone wandered 
into abandoned portions of the mine and by then was 
smothered with the heavy gas common to such places? 
Such things had happened within her memory, and the 
thought of them recurred under the least provocation to 
torment her. 

Margaret tried hard to quell her fears, but they grew 
as time passed. She sang to the baby to compose it and 
herself, walking often to the window from whence she 
had plain view of the mine-mouth and the ravine beyond 
it. She was standing there, as she had been many a 
time when he had waved at her from the little bridge, 


In The Carbon Hills 187 

when along the thin valley there went a deep rumble as 
if lightning had flashed on The Elkhorn, and its thunder¬ 
ous echoes traveled over onto The Lick. 

Then a great streak of flame and black, thick, smoke 
shot from the hole on the ravine’s other side and reached 
nearly to the scrub-brush on the opposite hill. There it 
died almost instantly among the tangled growth, its 
passing marked only by a great cloud rising and moving 
upward to the mountain top. Followed that . . 

silence .... then, running men and shrieking 
women. 

Later, Dark Night spread her sable wings for the 
second time in mercy over it all. The first night there 
had been confusion : this night the peace of death. Deep, 
wide shadows which lav over The Elkhorn and more 
narrow along the Lick valleys reflected themselves in 
many a woman’s heart. From Farley’s to the hill’s pro- 
pinquitous slope the pallid moon in pity obliterated the 
breeze-swung emblems of The Protectors’ passing. 

Without the closed doors the cold winds blew in 
moaning sympathy with many a Margaret Farley and 
her boy, picking up and mingling with its own dirge 
the uncommon multiplicity as it swirled from this tene¬ 
ment to that, and lost itself finally in the far reaches of 
the sullen night. 


CHAPTER XXIII. 


THE AGITATOR’S WIFE 

The term “miner,” as it appears in “'Roger Wilkes, 
Miner and Shipper of Coal,” and “Roger Wilkes: Miner,” 
is not synonymous, as even the non-mining reader is 
aware. But your acquaintance with our craft in this 
premise being assumed as simply generic you will for¬ 
give, we believe, incidental and necessary explanation 
purposed only to illuminate the better for the general 
reader not familiar with mines and mining people this 
story of life in the land of coal. The fact that our friends 
of Carbonia play each his or her part in the great drama 
is all the apology we offer. 

Following the happening just recorded in the previous 
chapter the new mine was placed on the same basis of 
equity and safety as the old, with the best of results. 
Some of our old friends came back to Carbonia: Mac¬ 
Donald with joy and Margaret with joy and sorrow. 
Turley had been appointed as “Outside Superintendent.” 
His activities, except on rare occasions when called on, 
were therefore confined to the surface. A new man took 
MacDonald’s place and the big Scot came to The Bffie 
as “Underground Superintendent.” A graded school and 
a new home built specially for the mine superintendent’s 
use brought all the little Donalds back from Colville: 
which proved the happiest day in Bobbie Burns’s life. 
He and Collson’s Pete celebrated it by catching a pole¬ 
cat, and Mary MacDonald by burning Bobbie’s clothing 
and putting him in the coal house until the stink died 
down. 


In The Carbon Hills 


189 


In another spot the home-coming from Virginia was 
nearly all sorrow. Margaret, as many another of our 
girls, left the parental roof a bride, alone; came back to 
it a widow and not herself only. And aside from this, life 
in the settlement following the induction of Esther’s 
baby was far from being one sweet song. In the great 
coal fields life rarely gets monotonous for employer or 
employee. There come peaceful spells, of course, in 
which both forces rest on their arms and await the next 
onslaught of the enemy: natural or human, but it is the 
stillness preceding the storm. 

Being thus always of The Craft life could never show 
to the Wilkes’s a trail other than tortuous. Even the 
semi-illusion with which The Past ever envelopes its 
scenes, its tragedies, transforming the serio-comical to 
farcical and tragedy to melo-drama, failed to make it 
other than it was. For them the journey covered up¬ 
wards of a generation and had jagged and torn at every 
turn. The change, to others almost imperceptible, had 
been always full of violent eruptions: mental and phys¬ 
ical : one or more characterizing each step up the in¬ 
dustrial mountain. Ask the miner and he would tell you 
earnestly the path were rose-lined, and the competency 
at the end reached easily as duck slides to water. 

The miner at The Bffie, however, with one or two ex¬ 
ceptions, may be pardoned if he prove too busy to turn 
back with us the pages representing a quarter century 
nearly, to that point where the conversation of two men 
resulted in divergent lines in the lives of several of out" 
people. Not being present he knew naught of a brother’s 
solicitude which prompted Samuel Turley to suggest to 
his intimate friend, Enoch Collson, that it seemed to him 
Wilkes was naturally meant for the employing side of 
the mining fence, “but somehow missed his footing at 
the start.” 

“Nay, my friend,” Collson objected, “it’s a ch’ice be- 


190 


In The Carbon Hills 


tween two things with a man like Roger: either he keeps 
on spoutin’ to suit the men or movin’ to suit the masters, 
or starts somethin’ on his own hook an’ flops to t’other 
side.” 

Collson had flung away the wet “heel’' from his pipe 
and proceeded leisurely to fill it, continuing his summing 
up regarding his and Turley’s mutual friends: Effie and 
Roger Wilkes. 

“It ain’t the man as has the gift o' gab like that as 
suffers, Turley; it’s the women . . . it’s him a-drag- 

gin’ that little mite of his around from this place to that 
an’ stoppin’ long at none of ’em . . . that’s the idee. 

But once let him have a pit of his own, Turley; let him 
have a pit of his own! Oh, no,” Collson poised the 
burning match until it burned almost through the tip of 
a calloused finger, while he let his eyes rove along the 
unlovely frame of Phillip’s Number Four , and thence to 
the great wooden hulk of a tipple, “not one like this at 
the start. I mean a little un of a car a day or there¬ 
abouts,” the miner’s voice raised to overcome the great 
sound of the black lumps pouring into the steel pan. 
“An' I’ve one in mind not fur from here as he can have 
in commission.” 

Foreman Turley opined that it wouldn’t hurt to sug¬ 
gest it to him. 

“Not it,” said Collson. “There’d have to be accounts 
kep’, an’ Effie could do that. Her an’ Emmy Morris 
used to do considerable summin’ back in Carbonville.” 

“True enough,” the foreman ended as the two men 
walked away together toward Turley’s sister’s home. “I 
don’t see anything to stop him and Sis from settling 
down an’ behaving themselves for a spell, instead of be¬ 
ing everlastingly on the trot. Running a pit of his own 
can’t be much worse than all the time running from 
somebody else’s. If there’s any difference at all, Collson, 
I think it should be for the better.” 


In The Carbon Hills 191 

But misdirected energy clings tenaciously to its path. 
Had Wilkes only himself to suit it would have pleased 
him to continue as he was: a roving emissary in the in¬ 
terest of unionism which in those days frequently failed 
to unite. However there were too many opposed to his 
impractical genius. He finally capitulated. His wife and 
he entered into the contract together, Effie having still 
a tidy little sum of her own left from overmuch economy 
during her school-teaching. And it took all her womanly 
tact and foresight to pull them through those first pre¬ 
carious days, as well as Roger’s courage and determina¬ 
tion once thoroughly embarked on the new line. 

From their first venture in larger fields we have ac¬ 
companied them in this story, and to that point now at¬ 
tained we may turn our attention once more with the 
truthful assertion that such success as had eventually 
come was due far more to Roger Wilkes’s careful choice 
of aides than perfection in generalship. The keystone 
that kept his arch intact has done the same for many a 
mining man. He understood men better than mines. 

Now after many years the time was come for him to 
lay the burden on young shoulders better prepared to 
carry it, and “take it easy” for the rest of his days. The 
family settled itself into a state of complacency long 
denied it, and almost deluded themselves it was perma¬ 
nent. The fickle jade of fortune had opportunely paved 
the way to rest by removing one incubus, and here, al¬ 
most before the last echoes of that died stepped up with 
another! 

But while peace did as yet remain, what with the stim¬ 
ulus of newer things, newer arrangements, they of that 
household permeated with the sweet incense of love, 
took quiet pleasure in reviewing the arduous and some¬ 
times humorous as well as tragic phases of the journey 
as they had found it. 

Elizabeth, recently home, remarked the burdens plac- 


192 


In The Carbon Hills 


ed on her sex in the mining districts of Europe. She 
had seen women in Belgium, Germany, even in Great 
Britain, working like men around the mines, a condition 
of affairs so happily missing from our own land. This 
was one of the themes born of the long tour which for 
her would never cease to interest. The semi-pessimistic 
Effie couldn’t see such an abyss in comparison. 

“They’re not the only ‘women of the mines’ who know 
vicissitude, dear child,” she said, turning her keen eyes 
in the direction of the morris-chair and Roger. “They 
do generally have an obtuse husband and a settled hab¬ 
itation. Why,” she added with an acrid thrust that was 
lost on the man in the chair, “old Jimmy Wilmot’s joke 
would have died there long ago from ennui.” 

Mrs. Wilkes had been to the kitchen for some fresh 
water to replace the stale fluid feeding a bunch of 
American Beauties, whose petalsv vied for supremacy 
with the exquisite colors of a vase Elizabeth had brought 
among a trunkful of other things, for June was come 
once more to Carbonia. 

“Well, Effie,” Wilkes gave in at the start, too sleepy 
to argue the point, “we were sure of matters not getting 
monotonous with us as they threaten to do now since 
we got over that bad affair in West Virginia. If I re¬ 
member right they got pretty lively sometimes,” his 
face wreathed in reminiscence of scenes conjured. The 
brain of the man seemed to have grown dull to the pain 
of past impressions, or was it the woman in the case 
who had borne it all? 

Let us see. 

As this family of mining folk sat in that room it 
looked the very impersonification of Content. Out the 
window bees hummed on the flowers swinging lazily in 
the June wind, on occasion wafting sedative fragrance 
through the casement. The little woman turned to her 
husband with the cutting remark: 


In The Carbon Hills 


193 


“They were too lively for the agitator’s wife, Roger 
Wilkes—too strenuous for the woman and child . . 

I have but to close my eyes, Elizabeth, dear, to see you 
clinging again to my skirts while I cried and packed and 
cried, first over this broken thing and then over that, 
while old Wilmot and a few of his kind grinned at the 
door without offering to help. My better neighbors 
and I rarely got acquainted; we never stayed in one 
place long enough.” 

“‘Jimmy Wilmot?* ” echoed the man in the chair, too 
comfortably sleepy to get mad. “It was him that told 
you three moves was as good as a fire, wasn’t it, Effie?” 
Roger lapsed into mine-town “English.” 

“Yes, and it was I who told him that was the ninth in 
a few years! Also that my heart was grown bitter to¬ 
ward the Chairman of The Pit-Committee although I 
loved him,” the aging face wreathed and the eyes lighted 
with the recollection, “at least when he stayed with me 
long enough . . .” 

The graying head bent to hide the color in its wrink¬ 
ling cheeks, and the fair replica of its younger love 
looked affectionately at her mother and the man in the 
chair, then lovingly waved her hand to the love of her 
heart evincing more or less agitation as he walked up and 
down the stone path in the garden of flowers. 

For the second and the last time Eldred Morris was 
a boarder at Wilkes’s. While Elizabeth was away he 
had moved bag and baggage. Matters had gone from 
bad to worse between John Morris and his son—both 
equally stubborn—both right, absolutely so, each ac¬ 
cording to his own idea. Their viewpoints had no com¬ 
mon meeting ground in Carbonia. 

And Eldred Morris was this Sabbath day wrestling 
with the first grave ethical problem of his managerial 
career. He returned, but without a smile, the salutation 
of Elizabeth, and suddenly strode toward the gate where 


J94 


In The Carbon Hills 


a man called to him. And while manager and miner con¬ 
versed the two women in that home looked out of the 
same window but did not see the same views. One 
looked into The Future; the other into The Past. 

Among the sun-kissed hills beyond Colville one saw 
no clouded happiness, nothing but one long dream of 
love, children, and marital joy, soon, now, very soon, to 
be consummated. To the other the trees held tangible 
things, even as their long roots gripped real earth cov¬ 
ering coal-beds which turned to tiny streams of real gold 
for them. 

But unlike Elizabeth, Effie Wilkes saw, also, alloy in 
a dark line whose angles were tortuous. In it were 
buried for safe-keeping and traveling, slightly beneath a 
layer of fine coal, a miner’s tools, with every one of 
which she was as a woman unduly familiar. She saw 
among those trees a tiny cottage, the walls of which, 
and the floor, were over-neat and bright compared with 
her surroundings. And that square piano—her piano!! 
How its possession had seared her! Loath to part with 
it, and yet the burden of constant moving . . . 

Then her eyes lighted again over those evenings it 
had cheered her in each strange village, and brought to 
a respectful distance of her door the younger mining 
boys, open-mouthed and rapt, to shamble off unsatisfied 
when the last note died. Her square piano! The only 
one in many a village she had known. It filled the room 
almost, even as it was now the most cherished article 
among many of more intrinsic worth. And as she looked 
out into the distance her nostrils were enveloped again 
with breezes strongly freighted with sulphuric fumes 
and the quaint odor of mignonette, which she grew in 
boxes, and would no more think of leaving to the tender 
or brutal hands of the village youth than she would her 
piano. 

To Effie Wilkes on this beautiful Sabbath the mem- 



In The Carbon Hills 


195 


ory of it all was not altogether sad. In a certain sense 
she felt that in some respects there was in it—from that 
distance—more joy than sorrow, as there always is when 
the vale of Youth is viewed from the precipice of Age. 
The cute, pinafored, child seemed somehow still more 
dear to her than that same child now sitting beside her 
in the full bloom of young womanhood; the little ging¬ 
ham dresses, the auburn curls so tenderly fostered, more 
satisfying to the mother-soul than the grown beauty of 
that same form enhanced with the best creations of 
Parisian clothing art from the sole of her shoe to the 
jewelled combs glittering in the wealth of neatly- 
coiffured hair. 

Mrs. Wilkes rose and stood watching with eager 
curiosity the two men at the gate, and sighed. As for 
the man in the chair any possible regrets he had been 
indulging in were obviously mere persiflage. He was 
asleep. His daughter laid aside a book which had lain 
long unread on her lap. 

Effie Wilkes went to her kitchen, thence out to the 
flower garden in the rear. Here she was joined later by 
Roger, who shook off lethargy by accompanying his wife 
on a visit to Emily Morris’s, while in the house Eldred 
Morris spoke somewhat dis-spiritedly to a sympathetic 
and loving listener of his first great conflict of opinion 
with his men. Later, at his suggestion, they went out. 



CHAPTER XXIV. 


THE POINT OF VIEW 

When Eldred and Elizabeth returned from a short 
walk toward the mine Elizabeth, seeing him in a better 
spirit, forgot the matter intentionally. The cargo of 
industry weighs lightly sometimes on the scales of 
woman’s love. She told him rather of the ludicrous phase 
of her mother’s reminiscence which he had missed, and 
of another story she had told her one day of the same 
Wilmot, when the ninth move had been several times 
augmented and they w r ere packing again in the same vil¬ 
lage, her orating husband having been discharged from 
the newest mine of several thereabouts—of chickens 
(which Roger loved as his wife her piano) which were 
so much in sympathy with their owner’s proclivity for 
changing residences that the hens, according to said 
Wilmot, would, on the approach of a wagon down the 
road, turn onto their backs expecting the string to be 
tied to their legs! 

“I had heard the story before and so had old Wilmot 
and I told mother it was old, and so forth, and what do 
you think she said, Eldred?” the blue eyes sparkled with 
merriment. She had pulled him to her knees and put her 
arm around his waist as far as it would go, and, finding 
it not quite sufficient to encompass the strong body, had 
helped it out with the other. Both of the lovers were 
apt to get precipitately weak, in those days, and thus 
need the support of each other. 

“How should I know, Elizabeth?” he asked, smiling 
into her eyes. 


196 


In The Carbon Hills 


197 


“She said as drolly as could be that it had indeed the 
better of the chickens in that respect . . . Our cup¬ 

board never remained full long enough for them to 
mature.” 

In the laughter which followed Morris told her: “You 
got just what you deserved,” and she as frankly admitted 
that she, too, felt that way about it. Then in a more 
serious mood he asked her questions on the matter troub¬ 
ling him. 

“What would you do if—if I were to cause you quite 
as much misery, perhaps, in another form? If the 30th 
were here and we were married, as I hope nothing pre¬ 
vent us this time, and I, like your father, let us say,” he 
urged, seeing her hesitate in wonder. 

“How could you be?” she failed at the moment to 
gather his meaning. “You’re different; you—no one will 
blacklist you as thev did papa, dear. Why do you say 
that?” 

“Different—in some ways, Elizabeth. But the em¬ 
ployer with a set point of view can stir up trouble if he 
persist in adhering to it, don’t you think?” 

Her head bent, and her eyes set on his large, brown 
hands, the fingers of which were clasped close to her 
full bosom. 

“I hadn’t thought of it in that way,” she replied. “But 
—but I don’t think I should cry as mother did. And if 
I did,” came more firmly, “I would want my husband to 
be a man—just as my sweetheart is—and not a jelly-fish 
to turn away from a principle because it might hurt to 
fight for it,” turning her head in an assumed attempt to 
escape the reward. Then, having regained her com¬ 
posure and her color Elizabeth added a little of her 
mother’s often repeated logic anent employing-fishes 
without fins and the ultimate predicament they found 
themselves in when trying to stem the industrial current. 
“I would rather ‘gypsy’ with the one than stay in one 
place with the other.” 


In The Carbon Hills 


198 

“And cry as mother did?” 

“I’d pack but never cry, because,” Elizabeth replied, 
“you see I’m Roger Wilkes’s daughter.” 

“Exactly,” Morris responded, taking her hand in his 
and both moving toward one of the windows facing The 
Bffie, “but you are also a woman, and you might. But 
that aside: you see that?” pointing to the smoke rolling 
from the stacks beside the mine. 

Elizabeth nodded, wondering. 

“Lots of it, isn’t there?” and again she nodded, still 
wondering. 

“You know why it takes all that to overcome a nat¬ 
ural tendency water has to run down hill,” he explained 
in part, “carbonic acid gas to seek dip headings and 
marsh gas high ones? You understand all that, being 
Roger Wilkes’s daughter and a woman of the mines, 
we’ll say,” at which she flushed rosily with pride. “You 
understand what it means if at every one of our mines 
the auxiliaries that go with that be denied, and yet you 
still say ‘pack?’” 

“Eldred,” the young woman exclaimed, “you speak 
in riddles, dear.” 

He took her gently with him to a divan and looked 
deep into those wells of innocence which had flowed no 
tears of anguish and industrial misery as yet. 

“Aren’t the mines yours, dear boy, at least to control?” 

“In a sense, yes; but you see even the autocrat has but 
two hands while those places driving toward Colville 
and other places need many. What is to take their 
places—peaceably—if they cease?” he asked her, still al¬ 
luding to the subject indirectly. But from the heavy, 
ominous silence which settled like a pall over the 
woman’s features it was evident Elizabeth Wilkes sensed 
the portent of the coming storm. She told him he was 
unusually strange, and doubtless overwrought regarding 
the possibilities, while she looked closely in an effort to 


In The Carbon Hills 


199 


read that in his eyes which his tongue refused to speak. 

“Let us forget it, then;” he suggested. “Come and 
play for me and let us sing something,” said he, “it will 
help pass the afternoon away.” He snapped his watch 
shut as they entered the room in which a beautiful new 
piano stood. On it a book lay open, and Elizabeth aim¬ 
lessly turned the pages. 

“I’ll find one,” he said, taking the book and pointing 
as he put it back to “Some Day We’ll Understand.” 

So together maid and man sang the beautiful hymn 
of promise. It struck a responsive chord in each young 
heart that day, and without shame the man’s voice vi¬ 
brated and the woman’s eyes were moist before the end. 
But yesterday their way to complete happiness seemed 
clear at last . . . and now? 

Since the control had passed into the mining engineer’s 
hands his every move and decision had been made after 
long and earnest consideration, with always the fullest 
possible toleration toward the men and their opinions. 
His family were miners pure and simple. He never for¬ 
got that; he had no desire to forget it. The woman he 
loved as he loved his own soul was a miner’s daughter: 
a miner but yesterday seeing all things from the em¬ 
ployee’s point of view, and even now finding it often 
against his inherent nature to go against them. 

Between the two the reasonable course had as often 
as not been changed to suit the men’s ideas. The old 
superintendent shook his now whitened head, and spoke 
of the smash sure to come to the wheel started down a 
mountain side. He knew the strength of many men com¬ 
bined, also how well they liked Eldred Morris and he 
them. But, he said, in words having the same meaning 
if differently expressed: the normal prairie-grass that 
feeds the herd, aflame destroys it. 

While murmurings had long been heard the crisis in 
a peremptory demand for “Union Recognition” at all 


200 


In The Carbon Hills 


their mines, and union rules in every respect, with his 
father’s name as chairman of the committee delegated 
to present it, had literally swept the mine manager from 
his feet. Capitulation meant making void many rules 
and regulations Morris had fostered proudly. When the 
committee came, his father and Collson part of it, he had 
been unprepared to give definite answer. Others were 
to be consulted. He had done this and sent word for 
the men to appoint one man to call at the big house that 
day regardless of its being Sunday, that if the men re¬ 
considered their decision the mine might continue its 
long unbroken run. He asked as a favor to himself that 
the “one” be not his father. This man Effie Wilkes had 
referred to some time before as “the agitator,” wondering 
if he had a wife. 

And when he was gone from him, Morris long and 
earnestly pondered the fact that all his efforts had failed 
to keep clear the road he seemed, till then, to be travel¬ 
ing to. a wife and the last dimension of happiness. This 
road he had taken the most diplomatic pains to keep 
clear of every tangible object, only to suddenly be con¬ 
fronted near the end with that non-negotiable mountain 
against which men and nations alike have stood baffled 
and defeated: The human point of view and men’s wil¬ 
lingness to suffer and die for a principle. The way he 
had thought clear was blocked with men—determined 
men—and many. His mind was to become—if they 
carried their point—subservient in many phases of mine 
control to theirs. 

Until this was settled there could be no great joy for 
him and—her. Marriage, anticipated in a few weeks, 
and the proposed trip to the Adirondacks, would be im¬ 
possible with that encompassing uncertainty. He must 
be mind-free: a word would make him so, for the com¬ 
pany had placed the matter up to him. 

“A penny for those thoughts,” the blue eyes twinkled 


In The Carbon Hills 


201 


up at him, and the crimson cheeks dimpled with a smile. 

“They stand the chance of costing millions of coppers 

and untold-” He had almost said “misery for more 

than one,” but instead sighed as he leaned heavily on 
the mahogany. 

“Then, let us chase them away again,” she prompted 
light-heartedly, striking the first notes of “Lead Thou 
Me On.” 

“Will that be appropriate for such obvious indecis¬ 
ion?' 1 Elizabeth’s lips framed the words which lighted 
her “secret”—purposeful incognizance—as so many 
lamps a dark place. And seeing she had uptripped she 
colored deeply, while the man bit his lip and turned the 
leaves to find her favorite. 

He found it and they sang it tenderly, reverently, well. 
Both had splendid voices at that time. But even the 
most fervent singing tires. Morris took out his watch 
and snapping it shut said: 

“Only three—the day seems long; I thought it five 
or six. What next?” 

Elizabeth suggested a drive past Morris’s, past Coil- 
son’s and The Four Rows, up over the hill where 
Pietrecco and his companions slept, and thence home for 
supper. He differed without scruple and was obstinate. 

“Anywhere but near dad’s, today,” he said, and she 
saw a hardness come into his face and eyes that had not 
been there before. She had never remarked it but once: 
when he spoke of Rummel—that Rummel who through 
drink had evidently found the little port lying snugly 
waiting for each human barque at the edge of life’s sea, 
and, let us hope, the girl and babe who had gone before 
him. At least so had the news come from Colville to 
Carbonia that he had chosen to go in search of it, and 
none being desirous of contradicting there the matter 
rested. 



CHAPTER XXV. 


A SURFACE TRAGEDY 
Act One: The Clouds Gather 

Elizabeth went to her room to dress; the young man 
toward the stables. As he turned he caught a glimpse 
of her through the open window, and a thrill of cruel 
emotion went through him. The question insisted: 
How far should a man go for the woman he loves, par¬ 
ticularly when that man and woman are on the eve of 
happiness which, granting the affection pure, original, 
has no equal in intensity in all the range of human 
emotion ? 

“It’s up to you, Morris!” they had said, and he knew 
it by the cruel pain it was inflicting: the crudest his 
soul had ever been called on to bear. If he sent the word 
that he had changed his mind to the men’s headquarters, 
even to his father’s home across the fields—the word that 
stood between him and the great joy—would it be con¬ 
ducive of the best results for him and for her? Would 
permanent happiness come of it? or regret? The ex¬ 
quisite days would fade to commonplace, but what of 
the subjugation that would follow weakness—now. That 
might remain for life! 

“This is hard luck,’’ he murmured, stooping to pluck 
a bunch of flowers for Elizabeth. “Dad’s troubles all 
came after—mine before marriage. And yet I’ve done 
what’s right man to man and never shirked—not even 
today. To do that would be right according to their 
idea and utterly wrong according to mine, and against 
my own idea of what constitutes any man’s inalienable 

202 


In The Carbon Hills 


203 


privilege. The two propositions seem irreconcilable: 
one or the other must give way, and I would not— 
neither would she desire me to—debase my manhood by 
acting the hypocrite. ‘Be a man,’ she said, and isn’t that 
I am trying to uphold—the principle of my firm belief 
—the greater part of me? of any man? I’d die rather 
than she should suffer, but this . . . I’ve given in 

. . . wages, hours, identical with the union mines, 
not a material iota which will take from those homes 
in the village a loaf of bread or an hour of comfort. 
I’ve spent more money in the last year on their homes 
than Wilkes did in all the years before and yet—we stick 
on this. 

Morris’s steps brought him near the house. Elizabeth 
tapped the window but he paid no heed. Perhaps he 
heard; perhaps he didn’t. He had turned stablewards 
again. 

Micky had the horses and carriage about ready, for 
he lived in three snug rooms above the stable with the 
latest adoration. His first, large love lay near the be¬ 
loved Cross. And Love seeks proximity of its desired 
in maid as in mistress; in hostler as well as master. 

Gawan’s problems were simpler of decision than were 
those of the man who, as he again neared the house, 
raised his head and saw the vision of winsome woman¬ 
hood near the window. Once again he turned abruptly 
and went in the garden. Nor could he have told just 
then which of two burning desires would prevail. As 
he walked he heard no sound of the mine below, rather 
the voices of jeering men, contempt of victors and those 
who like himself still believed in “an open shop.” His 
eyes saw no flowers, but rather demand stepping in¬ 
evitably on demand and overwhelming the adamantine 
of his convictions, transforming him to a mere figure¬ 
head insofar as concerned the control of his own mines. 

“They’ll see I’m in earnest and continue working,” he 


204 


In The Carbon Hills 


compromised with himself. “It’s only an ethical consid¬ 
eration, and the principle involved cannot mean to them 
what it does to me.” 

Yet in rebuttal came immediately and vivid the pic¬ 
ture of a man, young as himself , equally determined, 
and moving his kind by sheer force of belief in the 
righteousness of the other side: willing to suffer almost 
unto death for that which to his own son seemed wrong. 
Thus to the actuality of acute physical suffering and 
mental pain did The Invisible lead the mere mortal, ob 1 
viously predetermined on no denial in similar premise at 
a later day. 

“Certainly,” the newer prisoner writhed at the first 
twist of the shackle binding him, “in view of the facts 
my contempt for him and his kind is a farce ... in 
his place I would have done the same to Her . 

Involuntarily Morris clenched his fists. But an hour 
ago he had seen no right on the other side. He had sent 
the man away with a concrete summary of his em¬ 
ployer’s opinions on Constitutional Rights as they 
touched this case. He was dealing for a few: the 
stranger represented two thousand, and it had been 
thrust upon Morris as it had been thrust upon the men. 

He had wavered; so would the men, no doubt. While 
others were affected one could not think onlv of ones- 

m/ 

self alone. When the caroling birds outside Elizabeth’s 
window sang of happiness and the anticipation of their 
young, and the warm morning sun illumed her room, 
Eldred Morris had wickedly peeped through the partly 
open door and solved his first great problem with that 
look. For a brief period he found his position the op¬ 
posite to that he had taken in the end, bolstered with 
love and desire, but it passed. The Invisible, which has 
ever drawn men and the sons of men farther and still 
farther from a protoplasmic past to a higher plane of 
decision, a nearer godship, mercilessly bent the human’s 


In The Carbon Hills 205 

thoughts of softer things, and in the darker waters of 
more practical affairs had obliterated them. 

There remained but two ways now: force or com¬ 
plete capitulation. In perhaps five hundred of those 
men there existed an elemental desire strong as his own. 
Their strength imposed their opinions on the rest. 
Whichever way they took the other fifteen hundred would 
fpllow, meekly and reluctantly to work, jubiliantly on 
a strike and into trouble or victory. To them their right 
to choose who should or should not work at their re¬ 
spective mines was as plain as to deny it was to Eldred 
Morris. Even moreso as a matter of fact, for with them 
no doubt existed, while with the young manager it did. 

Despite the fact that he had recently sent the stranger 
away with an adverse decision an imaginary placing of 
himself in the men’s position: in the attitude which 
urged John Morris and Roger Wilkes to accept misery 
and an empty cupboard, brought doubt. But there must 
be a dominant factor in all human affairs and in each 
nature risen above the mere animal status of mentality. 
After twenty years the struggle was on again, on the 
other side of the fence as Turley or Collson had so 
aptly put it. 

“I wondered, often,” Morris cried almost in anguish, 
“if in their places I would have crushed Her heart; but 
it was then. I have ceased to wonder or question,” he 
told the Ever-Luring within himself who, firm as The 
Sphinx and more of a riddle, but smiled at this flounder¬ 
ing Atom, despite the fact that from its eyes, acutely 
sensitive, from its mind, acutely imaginative as all such 
natures are who create ideals, this human atom glanced 
at Another and say therein tears and, perhaps, blood. 

Turning from her he went back into the yard where 
the stables were. Elizabeth called to him but he did not 
answer. He was still not quite conquered, but searching 
in the deeper recesses of his mind for a side-step from 


20 6 


In The Carbon Hills 


this Siren. He could find none. The struggle which 
had come on him in all its intensity in the last hour 
seemed but to bind him with bonds made of the warp 
and woof of generations: some material impregnated 
within his every fibre in increasing quantity from re¬ 
motest time. He turned again to the house, sweating 
inordinately. The Vision of Winsome Womanhood was 
coming toward him in all its loveliness of pink and 
white. 

Morris glanced at Elizabeth and thought himself 
shame-faced. She saw no shame. He heard her re¬ 
proving him in sweet terms which carried no rebuke, 
but his head was bowed and his hands deep in his 
pockets as on a cold day. As became a mole who had 
wrestled with a mountain and won—almost—he sighed 
heavily, relieved that the worst was over. He was bat¬ 
tered and worn with the brief but severe mental struggle. 

“Eldred!” she cried almost fearfully, for the Western 
sun fell full upon his countenance, “what is the matter? 
You are pale, dear.” 

“I am hot through cowardice,” he replied hoarsely, 
thrusting his hand burning and feverish into hers soft 
and cool, “and, my God, I can’t help it!” 

Then turning from her suddenly, without noticing the 
look of extreme alarm his actions had brought into the 
blue eyes, he pulled a note-book from his pocket. Pencil 
there was fastened to it, and he wrote feverishly as one 
does who, if he do not haste, will not write at all. Tear¬ 
ing the leaf from its company he held it aloft to Gawan 
at the stable-door, and Gawan came. 

“Take this to the superintendent—Turley, I mean— 
at once. I'll attend the horses if you’re not back when 
we return.” And Gawan, between whom and Eldred 
Morris there had come a great gulf which neither had 
any desire to bridge, said “Yes, sir,” and was gone. 

While the beaten fighter explained to Elizabeth as they 


In The Carbon Hills 


20 7 


rattled over the road beyond Calabrue’s, the stableman 
rode horseback in the other direction toward the gray¬ 
haired Turley’s, who, like Gawan, was Eldred’s servant, 
now, and must do his bidding. 

That night Colville Western Union sent a message 
to a “Protective Agency” for a number of deputies “to 

come prepared for any emergency,” it read. 
******** 

As became men hired to preserve the peace of a great 
commonwealth these derelicts of the city’s slums and 
whisky-dens, these gun-men of the tenderloins, came to 
Carbonia, openly as such import deserved. The red sun 
sinking slowly over the spires of Colville fell aslant the 
blued barrels of their guns and made a deeper color— 
almost to the onlooker a blood-red—of the dark walnut 
joined to the steel. 

Our village, as such untutored hamlets will during 
periods of general hysteria, resolved itself into a com¬ 
mittee of unwelcome. It carried for the purpose of ap¬ 
propriately serenading the newcomers such an assort¬ 
ment of discarded cans and wash-boilers, broom-sticks 
and old kettles, as has never been seen along that high¬ 
way since. Yet it seemed a great hub-bub had been 
caused without need. The tempest in a teapot gasped 
itself out for want of fuel, and the lethargy grew pain¬ 
ful to the gentlemen who daily and nightly prayed to 
their Plutonian god for “somethin’ to turn up.” 

As day followed day with no sign of hostilities it is 
safe to assume more than one trigger-finger itching, 
since Morris had ordered that they cease shooting at 
inanimate marks, which tender and harmless diversion 
had enlivened the echoing woods and sent shivers of 
fearful anticipation down the Carbonian feminine spine. 

And so prevailed quiet. But the company’s mines 
were idle, and what use is a principle dead? The con¬ 
tract with a great steel corporation was vanishing, and 


208 


In The Carbon Hills 


Eldred Morris sought at first to hold it by purchasing- 
coal as Wilkes had done when it was a lesser matter by 
far. With many other incidentals Wilkes had not to 
contend with this plan proved too costly, among the 
“incidentals” being not the least an official force at 
each idle mine and each man on salary, not counting the 
up-keep of the “peace preservers.” 

This would never do, seemed suddenly to have be¬ 
come the opinion of those in power. If Carbonia’s men 
wouldn’t work others would, perhaps. The fiat went 
forth, and, bruited among The Four Rows and its con¬ 
temporaries of the surrounding country, set a smoldering 
fire aflame. The lightning struck almost out of a clear 
sky. 


CHAPTER XXVI. 

A SURFACE TRAGEDY 
Act Two: The Clouds Break 

Elizabeth was not unaware of her lover’s moves with 
a view to starting the large mine nearby first. A little 
mouse had whispered that the crisis with the men was 
expected at any hour. The miners were determined 
the imported strike-breakers should not enter the mine 
when they came; Morris was equally determined they 
should. The Effie was going to start—with the old men 
if they would, without them otherwise. 

Relative to this a meeting had been held late in the 
night, or early in the morning, if you please, in Bilkin’s 
Hall, whether you please or no, at which—and here we 
transcribe only the veracious account of certain “spies” 
of the opposing force—men had been seen loading and 
demonstrating weapons. Vari-colored rabbit-gun shells- 
had been freely in evidence, and younger bloods care¬ 
fully burnished the nickle on their “bull dogs,” the latter 
glistening ominously beneath kerosene lamps affixed by 
one Bilkins to illume less' murderous things. 

On the night of that meeting Elizabeth did not sleep 
at all. Sometime toward morning she found herself in 
that peculiar state when one is neither sleeping nor 
waking, and had felt—so she dreamed, perhaps—the 
touch of a tender hand on her hair and someone’s lips 
touch her own. Then footsteps had hurried quietly out 
of the room. From then on her sleep had been more 
sound and remained so until the morning was advanced. 

The veranda of the Wilkes home was an agreeable spot 

209 


210 


In The Carbon Hills 


on a sunny morning, particularly after the chillness of 
the bath. Elizabeth nearly always sat there in Summer 
after this now habitual function. She sat there this 
morning of mornings for her—and him. A few minutes 
after she was seated her mother came out through the 
hallway dividing the house, and stood silently for a 
moment with one hand resting on the pillar supporting 
the porch at that point and with the other shading her 
eyes. She turned and saw Elizabeth and bade her good 
morning. 

Below them the morning mists still covered The Bffie 
and its buildings from view. At length Elizabeth asked 
regarding Morris. Had he been in since dawn? and what 
time had her father gone to the county-seat to see the 
sheriff. Mrs. Wilkes replied with a sentence: 

“Eldred hasn’t been in since before daylight, and I do 
wish your father hadn’t gone to ‘Little* Washington 
about that injunction . . 

The elder woman had sometime during the last half 
hour heard shots, then more shots, and following that 
a strange, long silence. Also she had, on going nearer 
the lane leading to the mine heard other things still 
more ominous. But regarding this latter she couldn’t 
be sure she had heard the correct words shouted, and 
she would not have told all she knew if she had. It was 
obvious, however, she was extremely agitated. 

She went into the kitchen and came out with a cup of 
cocoa for the younger woman. It was a positive pleasure 
in that household to indulge the bride-to-be, each little 
service intensifying the love they all bore her. She placed 
the cup and saucer near Elizabeth, then looked deep 
into her eyes with an interrogation a moment later she 
spoke outright. 

“Will you promise me one thing, dear,” she said. 
“Will you do something—something very necessary for 
your—for— 


In The Carbon Hills 


211 


Mrs. Wilkes stopped, undecided how to frame her 
words, while her daughter said, looking at her wonder- 
ingly between the loose tresses which vied for color- 
supremacy with the mist-clouded sun: “Why, of course, 
mamma. Why- 

Her mother interposed suddenly, turning to go whence 
she had come. 

“If I should send you word do it quickly for—for your 
own sake, dear child,” she ended very abruptly and enig¬ 
matically. Then she slipped into the hall and out the 
rear door, perhaps to avoid further questioning which, 
just then, she did not care to answer, nor had no au¬ 
thentic means of answering if she would. She went in 
search of it, and, finding it, forgot the lesser fear in face 
of the greater. 

The train of thought prompted in Elizabeth Wilkes’s 
mind by her mother’s words, and still more because of 
her unusual agitation, excited the young woman to the 
point of intense uneasiness. She called after her to 
question her further, to explain, but she was gone. Her 
place was taken by Sophy, the maid, who promptly 
blurted out what the more cautious woman had intended 
only as a last word, and from Elizabeth : 

“Why should I go so quickly to Mrs. Morris’s? What 
did mamma want me to do, did she say?” Then: “Poor 
mamma, she is so excited this morning, I wonder-.” 

Under the eager, impulsive, questioning even the 
bovine countenance colored: the obtuse mind saw its 
fault. But having one foot in the two were not worse. 
Sophy even exaggerated. 

Elizabeth went back to the veranda, but her fingers 
were so cold she could not feel the cup. She set it down 
untouched, and for the second time untied then tied her 
hair in a loose knot. She peered anxiously along the 
dusty road running to the big mine. Its end, so far as 
she could see its end, contained no living thing. It lay 




212 


In The Carbon Hills 


yellow, warm and peaceful in the morning sun. False 
deductions often reassure. This did. But anxiety still 
remained to urge action. She grasped her slippers 
with trembling fingers, and spoke aloud her agony as the 
sound of much shouting reached her: 

“If anything happens, oh, God, take care of Eldred! !” 

She thrust her feet into accustomed places but never 
had laces seemed more stubborn. But at least they gave 
her time to soliloquize: to dissect her mother’s ominous 
suggestion and to bring her sweetheart’s words—which 
he had not known her listening to—into greater clarity. 
She had heard him speak more tenderly than usual of 
his father and Tom and Collson, of other men whom he 
had liked almost as brothers and had worked beside as 
a boy, and wrestled with in the tumultuous joy of well¬ 
ing strength, even as today he was again covering the 
ground morally in a test of power: “Good fellows, peace¬ 
able generally, and yet perhaps going to die—for that 
• • • 

Elizabeth Wilkes seemed to have only just then 
realized the appalling possibility of it all. Hitherto it 
had the vagueness of a dream. She started suddenly as 
if a crowd of thugs and bounders had by some magic 
appeared before her, and with their deadly Winchesters 
were about to shoot. “I must stop them!” she cried, 
but only the soft wind caught her words as the 
impossible assertion died with a throb in her throat, 
and the imaginary drama she had pictured herself 
as part of faded as a living thing came up the yellow 
streak of road. Her form stiffened and her fingers set 
tightly in her hands-palms as she watched it emerge 
from the mist and take to itself a specific shape with 
bare feet rymthically pattering. Coming opposite Bob¬ 
bie Burns MacDonald gasped an answer to her question: 

“The dep’ties has shot a lot of men,” he shouted not 
ungladly, doubtless feeling a small measure of impor- 


In The Carbon Hills 


213 


tance in his still smaller breast, as became the vehicle 
of such momentous news. Then having fulfilled his pur¬ 
pose there the lad went on, his dotted blouse bobbing 
oddly up and down as he loped swiftly along the path 
into the swail and up the opposite hill to Morris’s, 
thence downard past Enoch Collson’s and to the mining 
village. 



CHAPTER XXVII. 

A SURFACE TRAGEDY 
Act Three: The Price of Liberty 

Carbonia was expecting something to turn up. A 
quiet gathering of its forces followed the midnight meet¬ 
ing in Bilkin’s Hall, accompanied by much whispering 
haste, with a feeling of impending dread uppermost only 
in the minds of the aged and the women. For the strong 
males of the village there existed rather a complacent 
expectancy; for the irresponsible youth an exultant joy 
such as their hearts had never throbbed to. 

The quiet of the settlement was broken first by the 
union propaganda of John Morris, et al. The second 
time Fate and a pair of swift legs coupled to a slender 
body decided Bobbie Burns as the medium which should 
transform phlegmatic housewives and decrepit males into 
hypersensitive beings running wildly from house to house. 
And leaving them thus spreading the news we turn 
back to the tumultuous scenes being enacted elsewhere, 
into which Elizabeth Wilkes was swept as a leaf into a 
maelstrom. 

Elizabeth’s first thought was to find her mother. Evi¬ 
dently she believed the latter knew more regarding 
Eldred than she had told. In carrying out this idea she 
followed the same way and entered the garden from the 
kitchen door. So far as she could see it was empty. A 
horse neighed in the stables: a splendid animal Wilkes 
had given his daughter on a recent birthday, and which 
lover and maid shared in common. The groom and his 
helper were gone. She came out of the harness-room 
and called her mother's name. 


214 


In The Carbon Hills 


215 


No one answered, but almost as if replying to her a 
man’s form dropped from the fence running around the 
garden at the upper end, a high, closely-built affair 
made thus to keep the village youth from too freely 
helping itself from a number of fruit trees and berry 
bushes growing at the farther edges. In that direction 
the lane running to The Bffie from the highway was 
nearer. 

The man came directly toward her, gasping as he ran. 
His cheeks bore a pallor even deeper than the universal 
pallor of The Underground. Elizabeth recognized in 
him one of the big mine’s official force, and, behind him, 
enveloped in a certain antique cloak of martial design, 
an old peace officer struggled several hundred yards 
beyond the wall. Seeing the trend of affairs Collson 
had at the last moment thrown in his lot on the side of 
law and order. 

The spirit of it all had to a great extent overcome 
the tremulousness natural to one of his age in such cir¬ 
cumstances. He felt bolder than he looked, and, as ev¬ 
idencing that feeling, had contemptuously cast aside the 
proffered rifle and substituted therefore the old sawed-off 
musket which had upheld the dignity of a different 
Union at Cold Harbor and Gettysburg. It was up to 
date in that it bore the huge tunnel of steel common to 
shot guns, retaining sign of anything ancient only in 
loading. This was accomplished in Collson’s “rifle” 
from the wicked end. 

As for the old lampman he would certainly have 
scorned the veracious imputation that its powder cham¬ 
ber contained nothing stronger than dank air this day 
of days! A bright new percussion cap decorated its 
workings, and the hammer stood at that angle by Coil- 
son’s placing when men take care where points the 
muzzle. 

Thus did he run, sometimes. Had the life of every 


2l6 


In The Carbon Hills 


inhabitant of The Four Rows depended on a continu¬ 
ation of certain fleet-footed spurts the old miner were 
compelled to cease his efforts and see the sacrifice. Coil- 
son’s heart was willing; his courage was equal to any 
emergency, as witness his contempt of the Winchester 
in this premise, but his breath! 

And there we have told you the secret of Collson’s 
degradation: the miner’s standard floating at half-mast 
above a lamp office. For thus when we do not kill our 
men with strata or with gas or coal-dust we serve the 
same purpose by “miner’s asthma.” 

The old man had watched the younger stop Mac¬ 
Donald’s Bobbie, speak to him, then start another way. 
He had followed slowly. The fireboss, seeing Elizabeth, 
stopped. She went nearer; he tried to move away, a 
sentence broken by the looks of the young woman’s 
face. But she would have no denial. MacDonald stood 
breathless, near. 

“Tell me, for God’s sake, Mr. MacDonald, is he among 
them?” she pleaded, clutching the rougher arm of the 
man whose eyes flinched in kindness toward the frailer 
being. For a brief moment his tongue was undecided; 
the next, not being clever in periphrasing, he had told 
far more than he had intended. The effect made him 
alarmed for the woman, and he offered his help. 
Elizabeth refused it and consolation. He went on where 
he was needed, and she, because she had not the strength 
to do otherwise, stood with waxen face near the stable- 
wall. Once or twice MacDonald turned to look at her, 
then, with obvious reluctance, he was lost among the 
crowd gathering about the premises. 
******** 

Whether Elizabeth fainted or not she never knew. 
Sentences reached her disjointedly. She heard someone 
say: “There’s three dead an’ Morris-■” Then im¬ 

mediately from another in louder voice which drowned 



In The Carbon Hills 


2\J 


the first: “Move out there fellers, an’ let the doctor in, 
won’t yer?” and what she took for her mother speaking 
harshly but not distinct. The reply reached her plainly 
enough: 

“No, ma’m: it was yer damned deperties!” and from 
another, or it might have been the same for all Elizabeth 
knew: “He was tryin’ to get us miners to go back an’ 
got hit in the back hisself . . 

Following this there came nothing from that end of 
the lot but the co-mingling of voices: the roar of a small 
mob following in the wake of men carrying a stretcher. 
It seemed an eternity from the time Elizabeth saw them 
carry it through the gate until she felt strong enough 
to follow, and in the meantime other things had trans¬ 
pired closer at hand of which she had been a silent 
and vaguely-conscious witness. 

Indistinctly she saw another man come over the fence 
as MacDonald had done, after making much noise on 
the opposite side. And whether from excitement or not 
she did not know, but he had tumbled from the top to 
the ground. Also he must have been one of the “peace 
preservers,” for he had in his hands a gun when he fell, 
at least it looked like a gun when he came nearer, for 
there glittered plainly above a certain part of it one 
of those bright copper caps which set such things oil. 

Elizabeth had indistinctly crouched nearer the wall 
when the awful-looking weapon fell from the man’s 
hands and struck the ground, expecting the explosion 
she always feared. And having picked it up the old 
man—for such he was—came down the garden scowling 
at the universe. He looked like a soldier and gazed 
her way, but thinking perhaps she had of her own vo¬ 
lition chosen the spot to vent her sorrow went on. She 
heard what she took for his voice pleading from the 
front steps—those same steps up which Elizabeth had 
so proudly carried Esther’s baby—heard it rise strongly 


2l8 


In The Carbon Hills 


above the noise in telling them to keep their cursing 
and their noise for a more appropriate place. 

“There’s a young woman, yander, byes, as ain’t well 
just now, an’ the best master as youn ever have is shot 
up-stairs . . . Be off! be olf!! an’ leave ’em in peace, 

aye, an’ you, too, yer skunk-huntin’ ragskallamuffin, an’ 
take care of Nellie as you should be doin’ 

Evidently the mob was put partly human. The hound 
remained, his long ears hanging dolefully, his big eyes 
set on the house door. The men left to mingle later 

with a larger mob forming near the mine. 

* * * * ^ ^ ^ 

In face of a greater trouble Elizabeth Wilkes was left 
to her own effort to come out of her “faint.” For the 
first time in her life she had been utterly ignored. Coil- 
son and MacDonald were with the doctor in Eldred 
Morris’s room when she found her way to it. She had 
first found tears beside the stable-wall and strength fol¬ 
lowed. Why? How should I know, being a man and 
ignorant of such occult physiognomies as differentiate 
the sexes. Ask your physician, Madam, if he be well 
learned in such matters, why Elizabeth gained strength 
when she started to cry real heartily, and why the doc¬ 
tor’s ears were the keener in hearing her come sobbing 
along the corridor. Hilman, gently soothing, pleading, 
prevailed on her to return downstairs. 

She did, and entered the room where she and the 
wounded man had spent part of the Sunday afternoon. 
Just as they had left it the hymnal stood on the piano. 
Monday’s washing had caused Sophy to give that part 
of the house a rest. Near the instrument was a “Class 
Photograph” of the mining engineer taken on the day of 
his graduation, and the duplicate of one at Emily Mor¬ 
ris’s and an equally fine one at Collson’s Batch. 

For an appreciable length of time Elizabeth stood be¬ 
neath this picture, hands clasped in each other and the 


In The Carbon Hills 


219 


two directly in front of her breast. Spots on the fine 
linen covering her were wet with constant augmentation, 
but her lips made no audible sound. Then, turning from 
his image, smiling down upon her in all its ruddy com¬ 
pleteness, she spoke aloud as to a present auditor: 

“Oh, God, don’t let him die!” Then: “I know now 
what he meant when he said ‘Liberty will always exact 
an equitable sacrifice/ ” 

Elizabeth turned from the wall to the instrument. 
She sank to the stool and reviewed the scene of the pre¬ 
ceding afternoon with a poignancy which man may not 
describe to do her grief justice. The notes of the music 
they had sung together arose with her prayer uttered 
in questioning of Fate and herself: 

“Oh, if he die?” and in self-incrimination of a passivity 
she now deplored : “What will it all mean, this ‘being 
a man and upholding principle,’ this victory and honor, 
continued work, what good will it all mean if he die?” 
and mocking her gloomy thought the black type stared 
its answer: 

“* * * Amid the encircling gloom 

Lead Thou me on! 

The night is dark, and I am far from home, 

Lead Thou me on. 

Keep Thou my feet! I do not ask to see 

The distant scene; one step enough for me.” 

In effect the beautiful words were magical. Almost 
Elizabeth felt mistress of her actions, and with it came 
a desire overwhelming all else. She must see him. The 
surgeon had been witness to no transformation. He re¬ 
fused to let her in. And for some time Elizabeth was 
equally persistent in remaining near. 

Effie Wilkes slipped quickly through the door and 
told her why she must not enter the room just then, 


220 


In The Carbon Hills 


and why it were better she returned downstairs. This 
accomplished the older woman again sought her place 
beside the window in the room she had left, from which 
the great mine and all its environs were now plainly 
visible—and many men. 

Passing the front door onto the veranda Elizabeth also 
saw without alarm the growing crowds near the mine. 
The mists were risen; the “protectors’’ vanished. Strife 
increased to such extent that sounds and imprecations 
reached the woman shading her eyes with her hands, as 
well as the woman in the room above. 

Just then Elizabeth felt glad she had not looked on 
her lover. Her mother had told her a little; more she 
had heard surreptitiously, and a human body, loved as 
she loved his, stripped naked and blood-covered from the 
waist down is not a pretty sight. 

In an out-of-the-way corner in the room in which 
the wounded man lay Collson and MacDonald twirled 
their caps in agitation. From a bath-room adjoining 
Mrs. Wilkes procured all Hilman called for, including 
warm water. The company-surgeon was working un¬ 
aided except for an occasional bending of the two men 
to hand him some article or other. Out of sheer mod¬ 
esty, first, and the fact of the doctor's presence being 
between her and the body on the bed, second, Efifie 
Wilkes looked out of the window facing the mine. Hil¬ 
man broke the oppressive silence. 

“He’ll be conscious soon, I believe.” 

Then there was quiet again save for the rustle of a 
skirt or the uneasy shuffling of feet. The woman at 
the window turned to the men in the room: 

“The mine’s on fire!” she said, but her voice had no 
alarm in it, rather the completion of an expectancy. 

“Gude God!” cried MacDonald, and jumped to his 
feet. Collson also rose. MacDonald was whiter than 
the man on the bed. Hilman put forth his hand quickly. 




In The Carbon Hills 


221 


“Sit down, Mr. MacDonald, sit down,” he commanded; 
“you may be needed for something worse just now.” 
When MacDonald had reluctantly resumed his seat the 
surgeon asked regarding the men at the mine. 

“The scabs?” the Scot bluntly questioned, and immedi¬ 
ately apologized to Mrs. Wilkes. She smiled her par¬ 
don, and the frank expression brought vividly to her 
mind the many times she had heard the term of reproach 
in her earlier home uttered by her husband. To the 
doctor MacDonald explained conditions at the mine. 

“Then they have them ‘holed,’ as it were?” Hilman 
enquired, endeavoring, as a doctor will, to minimize the 
seriousness of the situation by assumed light-hearted¬ 
ness, “and are doing as we used to do when I was a boy 
with groundhogs; is that it ?” 

“No,” MacDonald replied, “if it all burns tae the 
ground nae smoke can git tae the men, d’ye no sae?” 
And, with much pride and profuse detail, he explained 
how the man on the bed had rearranged the mine so 
that in event of just such a catastrophe the men would 
not be smothered by the great holes acting as a crema¬ 
tory flue reversed. 

At various points Hilman replied “Exactly,” or “I un¬ 
derstand,” but is was obvious that only his subconscious 
self was attending to MacDonald. He was concerned 
with one man whose wrist he held more than the many 
below the fields beyond The Bffie. Out of courtesy to 
Mrs. Wilkes we may assume her quite conversant with 
this safety-provision of Eldred Morris’s construction. 
Otherwise it is hardly probable a sister of Turley’s 
would have evinced no more alarm than she at the in- 
formation. For Turley was in the mine, whither he had 
run with the deputies for safety immediately after the 
shooting. 

A minute later the doctor again bent to his patient. 
When he arose his almost inscrutable features told as 


222 


In The Carbon Hills 


near as they ever did what he feared. True to his train¬ 
ing he tried to speak casually. 

“The wires between here and Colville are cut I un¬ 
derstand ?” He spoke to the men. 

MacDonald nodded, and twirled his cap more vigor¬ 
ously. The doctor spoke next to Mrs. Wilkes. 

“Have you anybody handy who can ride a horse like 
—like thunder and lightning?” 

“Gawan,” she returned laconically, “if he’s returned. 
I’ll see.” 

“Do,” said the doctor, handing her a bit of paper on 
which he had scribbled. “And tell him to get both 
doctors if he can, and tell either to bring what is on 
there.” 

When Elizabeth’s (and Eldred’s) horse with Gawan 
a-top was in full gallop toward Colville Mrs. Wilkes re¬ 
turned to the room upstairs. 

“Consciousness is farther distant than I thought,” Hil- 
man admitted. Turning to the men he said: “You had 
better go for Mr. Morris’s father and mother and his 
brother if you can get him. My rig is at your disposal, 
for Mrs. Morris’s use, gentlemen.” 

Collson spoke for the first time since he came into 
the room, except in whispers to MacDonald. He spoke 
acridly: 

“Jack Morris is at ‘Little’ Washington.” 

The face of the woman still standing at the window 
turned a deeper pallor than it had when she said the 
mine was burning. Jack Morris was at the county seat 
because of action taken by Roger Wilkes and the miner’s 
son. 

“But, his mother and brother?” 

“Fetch them, at once, if you please,” she urged Mac¬ 
Donald, and accompanying him downstairs and into the 
yard where the doctor’s horse and buggy stood. “Leave 
that there,” she commanded. “Take our surrey and 
coach-horse and I’ll get some quilts and blankets.” 


In The Carbon Hills 


223 


This done Effie Wilkes went back once more. She 
feared the meeting with her old schoolmate. But she 
feared without need. The real mother-heart was full to 
overflowing of her boy this day: so full it cared not for 
anything else. It was pitiable to see her when they laid 
her on chairs by the window, and almost as pathetic the 
anguish of Elizabeth. She had slipped in with Mrs. 
Morris and Tom. She cried audibly; the mother did 
not, but tears streamed down her cheeks and the last 
atom of color left her face, and her lips almost bled. 
The scene was too much for MacDonald and Collson. 
They went out, and the doctor turned to another, this 
time with a smile lighting his red, fat face. 

“Miss Elizabeth,” said he, his voice rising with an as¬ 
sumed querulousness, “suppose you help Miss Sophia 
answer any inquiries at the door? You may tell them, 
regarding Mr. Morris, that we expect him to be wide 
awake and enjoying a chat with some of us in a few 
minutes.” 

Mrs. Wilkes took her cue from the next words he said, 
looking aside at Emily Morris: 

“This young man, I understand, hasn’t seen his moth¬ 
er for some time, and, when he finds she has come pur¬ 
posely to see him he may want to say something he 
wouldn’t care for even his sweetheart to hear, isn’t that 
so, Mrs. Morris?” to which Emily Morris nodded, but 
the smile the poor soul forced to her lips was uncanny. 

For a while after the room was emptied of all save 
herself, the doctor and her boy—Tom having gone back 
home for something his mother desired to bring and in 
her excitement had forgotten—Emily Morris fought the 
most desperate fight of her life. She wanted to know 
if her son were going to live. Hilman also knew she 
did. And she believed he could approximate an answer. 
Reason urged her to ask: Philosophy ranged itself on 
the same side, and hinted that knowledge would not 


224 


In The Carbon Hills 


change death to life nor life to death. Against both was 
Mother-Love, strong in a strength next to God’s affec¬ 
tion for His children, and as forgiving, yet in the woman 
weak in face of the possible verdict she believed lay hid 
in the surgeon’s steel-gray eyes. She looked again and 
again into his face, thence to the form on the bed, and 
each time baffled. At last she could stand it no longer, 
her voice firm yet flinching, commanding yet pleading: 

“Doctor,” she said, “will my Eldred live?” 

The physician made no answer for a while. Silence, 
heavy and ominous, was broken only by the sighs of the 
mother and the almost imperceptible breathing of the 
unconscious man. Then soft steps sounded nearby and 
Mrs. Wilkes entered before the doctor spoke. She sat 
beside her friend and soothingly asked her if she could 
do anything for her comfort. Behind her she had closed 
the door, but another heard the verdict Emily Morris 
not alone feared. 

“I don’t know, but,” looking closely into the invalid’s 
eyes, and seeing determination there stronger than aught 
else, “it is very doubtful. He’ll be conscious, surely, be¬ 
fore long, however, and that’s why I sent for you.” 

The words went like an electric shock through another 
who had hungered and been unwittingly fed. Elizabeth 
felt as she had beside the stable-wall, and, fearing in her 
ignorance that if she fainted and caused any commotion 
whatsoever there it might have a determining effect on 
her lover’s life, she almost ran downstairs. Mrs. Wilkes, 
wondering at the sound of steps, investigated. Seeing 
no one there she went back, and like a Spartan watched 
the flames lick the last building from the ground near the 
mine, yet quivered and moved quickly from the window 
when the panes rattled from the concussion of the ex¬ 
ploding powder-house. 

And as the fire so the frenzy grew. Men raised their 
voices and destroyed and cared not why they did it. 


CHAPTER XXVIII. 


DELIRATION 


Late that night three physicians, in consultation to¬ 
gether, thought Eldred Morris had about an even chance 
between life and death. “The crisis will come when Am- 
bridge operates,” Hilman told John Morris. “You may 
tell your wife we have sent for him and a nurse, and 
that he is the most skilled surgeon we know of. We 
must do the best we can until then, and the women 
here have promised to help. After that—well—we’ll 
hope for the best while being prepared for the worst.” 

Hilman turned again after he had parted from John 
Morris at the gate. “I have advised the women folk 
that fever might cause some little trouble, and it would 
be advisable for you to stay as long as you can when 
you return. The fever will rise before morning, but you 
needn’t be alarmed if—the patient can be kept still or 
nearly so. Otherwise in that case hemorrhage will undo 
it all. Should you find it necessary send for me—quick!” 

Through the long night Mrs. Wilkes and Elizabeth 
took turn watching with John Morris and Roger Wilkes. 
The wounded man made several efforts to remove the 
bandage from his waist. And as the doctor had fore¬ 
warned the fever rose as night waned to dawn, and from 
the patient’s lips came mutterings and disjointed sen¬ 
tences with here and there a sharp command or an oc¬ 
casional oath. Nearly always he was at the mine. 
Names he spoke at times, more often not, while the men 
listened and understood. 

During one interval, when Elizabeth sat on the cover- 

225 


226 


In The Carbon Hills 


let beside him, it became necessary for her to call her 
mother’s help before he calmed. Then, quicker than 
their quickest action he rose upright, held forth his 
fingers, as though holding out some heavy thing, then, 
listening intently, laughed. Here and there he mentioned 
the word “Pietrecco,” and once as they smoothed his 
pillows he muttered: 

“That was natural—his own—that hound would rob 
a -thousand.” 

They asked him if he felt better, attributing his sud¬ 
den silence to more material ease, and he retorted sav¬ 
agely: “It ought to have killed him!” As he said this 
he looked straight at Elizabeth, to whom it seemed im¬ 
possible that incoherence was behind those eyes. But 
they were unnaturally bright. He fancied she was Es¬ 
ther. He reached up his hand and set it gently on her 
shoulder. Without diffidence her own, soft and cool, 
sought it and held it near her heart. 

“Poor Esther,” he said, “I thought you had gone . . . 
Rummel . . . yes . . . he’s gone . . .” 

This seemed to have increased the fever, and at Mrs. 
Wilkes’s suggestion Elizabeth spoke to him of that they 
thought would not quicken the fast-pulsing blood. She 
endeavored to divert the wandering mind by asking him 
if he recalled the story he had told her of Collson’s dogs 
—of the door ajar and the troubled, aged watcher be¬ 
neath the pine. But his mind ran not on the humorous 
part of it. He spoke of a girl and a basket, and that 
the girl had told him “Margaret would be glad to have 
him call on her,” and laughed strangely, while Elizabeth 
conceived a sudden desire for the outside air. 

Her mother took her place, but was relieved again 
presently. After her return Elizabeth remained with 
him until the new sun flooded the room and the blinds 
were drawn to shut it out. When the doctor came John 
Morris took such comfort as he might to his wife, from 


In The Carbon Hills 


227 


whose couch throughout that night incessant prayers 
had sought The Throne, in thought beside her boy and 
watching him in tender spirit. 

Toward midnight of the second day he had a slight 
relapse. Ambridge was delayed but had telegraphed in¬ 
structions, and said he would be there early next day. 
The nurse had preceded him. She and Mrs. Wilkes were 
alone witnesses of the second incoherence, in which the 
fevered man spoke of “old butties—good fellows, too—” 
and, “it’s a pity—pity—some of ’em might die—for. . . 
that . . Then, turning suddenly and with fists 

clenched he struck at the pillow beside him, followed 
by alarm depicted on the features of one of the women 
and none whatever on those of the nurse. She listened 
complacently, and gently but determinedly forced him 
to his place. 

“You imps of hell!” he cried, “aren’t three enough that 
you would shoot running men?” which outburst brought 
not only pain but a measure of sanity. Through opiates 

administered by the nurse he found rest in sleep. 
******** 

Ambridge had been and was leaving. 

“I thought it would never end; it seemed intermin¬ 
able,” Mrs. Wilkes told the great surgeon when together 
they left the room. They two had been boy and girl 
companions. 

“All such cases do—to the friends, naturally,” he re¬ 
sponded. “Really, though, it was only two hours, in¬ 
cluding the operation. The young man was unconscious 
exactly one hour and thirty minutes.” 

Then he left her and spoke aside to Hilman regarding 
certain precautions to be taken. A dispatch was to be 
sent him at stated intervals, later a letter each day. In 
event of certain complications Ambridge was to return. 
He went down to a waiting carriage. Efifie Wilkes fol¬ 
lowed him and would know the truth. 



228 


In The Carbon Hills 


“Well,” said he from his seat, smiling at her intensity, 
“I reckon, Effie Wilkes, you are too old for subterfuge,” 
from which we may assume to our several satisfactions 
the relative amount of ingenuousness in the two persons 
facing each other. His hand sought her shoulder as she 
stood beside the carriage step, and his eyes looked into 
hers as he told her her son—for thus he intentionally or 
unintentionally called his patient—would not attend the 
mine for a long while. “But there’s the best of hope, 
the best of prospect for ultimate recovery. He has un¬ 
tainted blood and a giant’s strength and the stamina giv¬ 
en only to the sons of generations of men such as- 

Mrs. Wilkes interrupted him. 

“Such as they who do—that?” her eyes sought, and 
her finger pointed contemptuously to, the blackened heap 
where the buildings at The Effie once stood. 

The brow of the great man clouded. “No, madam,” 
said he, quite impatient with comparison not only odious 
but irrelevant to the case under discussion, “and yes. 
He’s somewhat dififerent: merely such as the best of 
them mentally in normal mood: no better than the av¬ 
erage physically. I know,” he added with positive pride 
and emphasis, “for I, too, was a miner, you’ll remember 
. . . My best cases have been among my own kind 

and—his,” alluding to the man upstairs. “Like a trout 
to the fly they have risen splendidly to my effort—gone 
more than the patient’s requisite half-way. That’s why 
I have the best of hope regarding the young man.” 

Effie Wilkes felt she had deserved the rebuke. Her 
cheeks flushed with a faint sign of pride as she apolo¬ 
gized. He accepted her apology with the words: 

“We are all brutes, Effie, you remember the classic 
told us at our beloved Washington and Jefferson,” pull¬ 
ing on his gloves preparatory to starting, “when Reason 
has temporarily vacated the seat of Control,” which the 
former schoolma’am was generous enough to acknowl¬ 
edge as truth. 



CHAPTER XXIX. 


SOLDIERS AND PEACE 

Following the affair in the lane the spirit of revenge 
ran riot throughout the entire vicinity. County officers 
were overpowered; soldiers of the commonwealth were 
called out. 

They came—being for the most part working boys 
themselves, with kindly leanings toward the strikers, but 
disciplined to the point of doing their sworn duty at all 
events. They did so, but had no need to kill. While 
they were there no shot was fired with a miner as a 
target; none was needed. They came to our country 
really to preserve the peace. The conservatives among 
the miners combined forces with them to accomplish 
this meritorious purpose. Their headquarters were in 
one of the wide spaces between Calabrue’s and the big 
mine, since near Carbonia incendiarism had worked its 
most vicious way. Smaller detachments were detailed 
to look after the various mines. 

The display of friendliness remained unbroken. To¬ 
ward the end one frequently remarked the trim uniform 
mingling among the miner youth in a game of “seven 
up.” This when off duty, of course. And even more 
often, considering the time Cupid had to make his ar¬ 
rows, could they be seen playing a game of hearts with 
the pretty girls of our village. Nor can we in truth con¬ 
fine this. It went on as often during picket as furlough. 
But if there be any punishment to follow let us be fair, 
and partial to neither side: The girls, like Barkis, were 
also willing! 


22 9 



230 


In The Carbon Hills 


As day followed day with no sign of strife the soldiers 
left for home, leaving behind them much good-will but 
many bad hearts. By the time the civil officers reached 
the point of inquiry into the originating affray affairs 
were on a fair way to settlement. The verdict was a 
compromise. 

“The whole affair seems to be a bad mistake,” said 
The Public. False information conveyed to the deputies 
as to the fighting equipment of the strikers. They—the 
deputies—mistook broomsticks for Winchester barrels, 
there was no doubt about it, and aimed at the trees to 
scare the men. 

“Bad marksmanship,” said The Coroner. 

“You thought they were well armed, you say?” queried 
the miners’ attorney, at the hearing in Colville.* 

“We did indade, yer ’Onor,” retorted the “officer” of 
The Army Of Protection. 

“Then you thought wrong,” came the trenchant ans¬ 
wer, accompanied by a formidable paper on which was 
much writing transcribed from the police records of the 
State of Pennsylvania. “Does this sound like rifles and 
ammunition? Listen!” So he read: 

Therefore, etcetra, on the person of 
John Morris, arrested after the riot, sev¬ 
eral documents, duplicates of notices 
warning his followers to keep the 
peace; further: several letters of a bus¬ 
iness form, one ordinary pen-knife, a 
few coins, pipe, tobacco and a pencil. 

On Joseph Farley: one broken broom- 
handle, a pipe, plug of chewing tobacco 
and one packet of Five Brothers, some 
matches. 

♦Those interested and desirous of reading the account of 
this affair in full would do well to refer to the files of THE 
COLVILLE WEEKLY NEWS of that period, from which these 
excerpts are copied. 



In The Carbon Hills 


231 


On Thomas Jefferson Adams, one 
twenty-two calibre revolver, apparently 
unused. 

“And there, gentlemen, you have the general descrip¬ 
tion of them all. The gun found on the miner T. J. 
Adams was the only one taken from all the men, and I 
have here witnesses who have handled such things many 
years, who will swear the toy Adams had in his posses¬ 
sion had not been fired in a month. This, Adams him¬ 
self, being duly sworn, admitted that he had no ‘shells’ 
else he ‘might hev took a pop at ’em just for the fun of 
it.’ To which I will add that it is the opinion of reputable 
witnesses that there would have resulted more ‘fun’ than 
damage.” 

In reply to the opposing legal light the miners’ attor¬ 
ney admitted that undeniably the miners rioted, and, 
after the killing of their comrades, burned. Undeniably 
they did not “riot with intent to murder.” “Their ob¬ 
ject,” said he, “was to keep the imported strike-breakers 
from taking the bread out of their mouths, as Mr. 
Adams put it. Of course we admit the technical error 
of our clients. Every man has the right to work or leave 
it. The miners could not see it thus, and tried to keep 
the new men out by mere physical force, and not by force 
of arms as is stated. They were doing so when the 
deputies fired among them. 

“They dispersed at once, leaving some dead, some 
wounded, among them, as it happened, General Manager 
Morris who at the moment of the first shooting by the 
deputies was, probably unknown to the latter, at least one 
may so assume, among the miners pleading with them to 
go back. I need not say which way they were going. 

“What happened after the shooting is another ques¬ 
tion not to be decided here. The incendiarism is a mat¬ 
ter for The Court and Grand Jury. We are here regard¬ 
ing the disposition of the shooting affray when Eldred 


232 In The Carbon Hills 

Morris and several of his miners were shot. And before 
you Gentlemen of The Coroner’s Jury give your verdict 
I wish to read further from these papers regarding the 
weapons said to have been in possession of my clients. 

Further examined the person of Wil¬ 
liam John Davis, alias One-Eyed-Bill, 
and found the following, to-wit: two 
pairs of spectacles, one pick-handle, 
broken, two pipes and one paper of 
Weyman’s, some matches, some chew¬ 
ing tobacco and one glass-eye. 
to which some clerk of indubitable and tender youth has 
here made in fine red-inked parenthesis (For use on Sun¬ 
days!)” concluded the attorney, assuming a dignity none 
of the jurors exhibited when he handed the paper around. 

The verdict was satisfactory to those concerned. We 
of The United States had not yet been shocked into 
the clearer vision which imprisoned the gun-men (so 
called deputies) in the Roosevelt, New Jersey, cases. 
Striking miners were still considered fair game, to be 
shot at the pleasure and whim of the hunters hired at so 
much per diem to do the killing as indifferently as the 
Polish butcher at the Stock Yards of Chicago. The sea¬ 
son was always “open." Carbonia considered itself 
lucky to escape hanging for letting itself get shot at, to 
quote our friend Gawan. 

There came to us later certain information concerning 
a visit made by several participants in the hearing of 
which we have mentioned a little, in which testimony 
of the wounded men was taken. Also it was rumored 
that the leniency with which the case was handled was 
prompted as much by Eldred Morris’s and Roger 
Wilkes’s insistence as by Public Opinion. Both thought 
the afifair had caused misery enough. 

In the meantime for all concerned the crucial period at 
the big house passed slowly enough. Hilman was in 


In The Carbon Hills 


233 


attendance almost constantly. Elizabeth, under neces¬ 
sity of being somewhere, since they would not allow her 
to be in the sick-room but a few minutes at a time, and 
that not very often, spent much time with Emily Morris. 
For the rest she perused those books they had read to¬ 
gether and the hymns they had sung the day before the 
shooting. The leaves containing the latter she tore out 
boldly, and placed next her own bosom’s flesh because 
his hands had touched them last. 

Foolish, wasn’t it? 

Perhaps your “Elizabeth” can tell you better than I 
why she did that, and in what way it gratified her desire 
for him in a degree. This happened the day Ambridge 
came again for the second time, having received the 
call he had feared. If she were to be denied him, as was 
thought very likely that day, she would treasure the last 
things his hands had touched when he was with her and 
well, Elizabeth unblushingly told Ambridge as he took 
her arm in his and told her with fatherly solicitude one 
thing she must not do that day. He had daughters of 
his own who had sweethearts. 

“Under no circumstances must you go near your—er 
—the young man’s room again until-.” Here the sur¬ 

geon stopped. He was feeling a pulse worse than the 
one upstairs. 

“Until what, Doctor?” she asked. 

“Until you are—are braver,” he turned the word. 

“Then I’ll be—I’ll be brave right now,” she faltered 
piteously, and immediately burst into a flood of tears. 

Anxiety had left its mark on her. For many nights 
she had slept hardly at all. Yet despite her giving way 
just then the interval had steeled her to meet the crisis 
which was coming with greater fortitude. She had 
gained sympathy as well as given it at Emily Morris’s. 
For the invalid mother and John Morris the suspense was 
almost unbearable, the strike non-existent. For The 



234 


In The Carbon Hills 


Local President the union might die if need be, if only 
his boy lived. And an old man wearing the great-coat of 
Civil War days, accompanied by Pete and Nellie, wore 
a deeper path than had ever existed before between The 
Batch and the big house on the hill. 


CHAPTER XXX. 

THE CRISIS 

For reasons not necessary to mention here I was un¬ 
able to be present in Carbonia during the crisis on the 
outcome of which Eldred Morris’s life itself depended. 
But I have beside me as I write certain papers which 
describe this most critical period of the miner’s existence. 
These were written for me particularly, and so vividly 
portray what in part transpired that I deem them es¬ 
sential in the history of this miner’s life. Being from 
his own hand they are necessarily incomplete, ending 
before our desire. 

They state that shortly before the great surgeon’s 
arrival for the second and last time they had taken 
Elizabeth away from her sweetheart. The description 
of this enforced parting, which both feared might be 
forever, is so pathetic, from what I can gather, that I 
refrain from detail. Instead I hurry on to the man, still 
alert but very weak, watching Ambridge “take from a 
large bag he had brought with him a rubber-like cov¬ 
ering and a wicked-looking tray of tools, which he 
proceeded to assort as indifferently as a miner chooses 
his favorite picks. 

“With this rubber concern,” these papers read, “he 
covered himself, leaving only his eyes and mouth un¬ 
closed. Even the latter was shielded by gauze. Hil- 
man’s part of the affair was merely to give ether and 
hand the instruments. The day before he had perform¬ 
ed all the menial preliminaries. Poor Hilman! He and 
the specialist put one in mind of some of the young men 
at our mines who were drivers of mules and diggers of 

235 



236 


In The Carbon Hills 


coal when I was, and who are the same today. Both 
these doctors are graduates of Jefferson Medical College 
and yet . . . one makes his thousands while the 

other hardly gets enough to live decently. Yet both had 
the same opportunity to advance and both were of the 
same class.” 

This is obviously an indirect allusion to the fact that 
most of the young men who were miners with Eldred 
Morris are still such, their nights being spent loafing in 
the company-store or in some shack playing seven-up 
or euchre, while he spent his over books and papers and 
the study of his craft. He continued: 

“But at last all was ready, and my heart pounding so 
I was ashamed of it. I felt sure the doctors—all of them 
from miles around were there, and the nurses (they 
had two, then)—could hear it. If they did they said 
nothing. Instead Hilman dabbed the thing over my 
mouth, and it seemed as if I had taken a lot of water 
into my lungs. This rather startled me. I wondered if 
when the matter got really serious I would make a strug¬ 
gle. I was anxious to get to that point, for it seemed an 
interminable length of time between each dab of the 
cone, and the silence with it all was oppressive. Then 
somebody broke it. I couldn’t tell truthfully who it was, 
for the voice seemed strangely unfamiliar and far away. 

“ ‘Just breathe easier,’ it said; ‘it won’t hurt you . . . 
close your eyes tighter else it will make them smart 

y 

• • 9 

“Then the silence again. Every breath I took now 
was burning hot and smothered me to the extent of de¬ 
siring to fight it off.’’ 

Morris probably meant the anaesthetic agent. 

“I could hear my heart drumming in my ears, and the 
exhaust of an engine somewhere outside.” (No doubt 
this was the fan engine at The Effie, which they had by 
that time improvised.) “I wondered how many more 
cracks it would make, and whether my heart would stop. 


In The Carbon Hills 


23/ 

It was going very slow then, and all at once seemed to 
stop altogether. 

“Then followed a void, broken all of a sudden by a 
myriad sparks shooting in a world of space. I seemed 
relieved of all physical weight . . . my body was 

floating at will among the starry clusters. Everything 
was easier now; the trepidation was past. But I w^as 
still thinking of Elizabeth and mother. I had just made 
up my mind to tell Ambridge to stop a while. There 
was something I had forgotten to tell Elizabeth to tell 
mother. I started to frame my words, I thought, when 
crack!! the pyrotechnics all gathered in a bunch and 
burst right in front of my eyes and knocked all thought 
of the women downstairs, the men at the mine, every¬ 
thing pertaining to my past, present and future into 
utter oblivion . . . The display faded as suddenly as 

it came and ... I knew no more.” 
******** 

I learned from others that at that moment Mrs. Wilkes 
and Elizabeth were together. Constantly back and forth 
along the stone flags, screened from the prying eyes of 
occasional groups passing and repassing the big house 
since what was happening became generally known, 
Roger Wilkes paced nor could have no comfort. At the 
house across the swail the father of the now unconscious 
man dared not leave Emily Morris for a moment. The 
matter was as critical for her as for her son. Tom had 
called and gone and said he would come again soon. 

As for Wilkes he was but following a custom he and 
his chief mine official had in common. The secluded 
garden and the long walks between banks of flowers gave 
good opportunity to walk off agitation, if it were pos¬ 
sible. For the old mining man it was not possible that 
day. Into his life, as indeed into the erstwhile reluctant 
Effie’s, Eldred Morris had grown step by step as the 
son they had not. For them he had really become such. 
And never as that day had Roger w r alked those stones. 


238 


In The Carbon Hills 


Not even on the day following the explosion at the mine 
nearby had he felt the same sinking at heart anent the 
recurrent dissection of a given thing. 

At infrequent turns he went into the stable and spoke 
awhile with the hostler and to the horse which Eldred 
had often ridden. The sensitive, highly-bred animal oc¬ 
casionally mistook the tread of Wilkes for the younger 
man, for he was more accustomed to Morris than the 
woman whose horse he was. He neighed wistfully for 
the rider who had forsaken the saddle, and Wilkes spoke 
to him as to a human as he stroked the fine arching 
neck: 

“He’ll come again, Laddie; he’ll come again.” 

Then for a full hour suspense prodded his feet. They 
were to let him know when consciousness returned. 
There had come no word as yet. The minute finger on 
his watch crept torturously. All was not well or they 
would have let him know, yet he feared to go in and 
ask. He risked a look into one of the lower rooms as he 
reached the house on one of the turns. He saw only an 
auburn-haired head buried in his wife’s lap; the aging 
fingers smoothing the combed waves. All was quiet. 

This started him off again feverishly, trying to smoke 
and as often throwing away the cigars. The horse heard 
the heavy step again and called. The old man went in. 

“It’s not over yet, Laddie,” he told him; “not over 
yet.” 

Then he went out, but the stones seemed all one: 
phlox drummondi mixed strangely with the alyssum bor¬ 
dering the path. 

******** 

The first thing Eldred said after the return of con¬ 
sciousness was “Where’s Elizabeth?” They told him 
and sent for her. She went—after an appreciable length 
of time. Elizabeth Wilkes was a woman. She had held 
up all the time one would not have been surprised to 
see her sink beneath the strain, but when that strain 


In The Carbon Hills 


239 


was over she collapsed. The delay was quite as well. 
She could but have grasped his hand and left with vol¬ 
umes of words she desired to say unspoken. Talk was 
obviously, just then, forbidden. 

But the day came when Elizabeth was allowed to re¬ 
main a while and even speak with the patient. Almost 
her first words were self-incriminative. She referred to 
the Sunday he had been so undecided, and in her heart 
lay heavily the suspicion that what she had said about 
his remaining firm to his convictions at any cost was 
partly, if not altogether, responsible for what had hap¬ 
pened. 

“If I hadn’t said that, Eldred,” she cried, taking his 
hands in hers, “it might have been different.” 

He stopped her by pulling her feebly to him, not yet 
daring to move from the position in which he was placed, 
and kissed her again and again. This was the first time 
they had been alone for oh, so long! And the accommo¬ 
dating nurse was at dinner. 

“Then that Law of Compensation we were reading in 
Emerson had a hand in it, little girl,” he told her, 
smiling. “It has made you more dear to me than ever, 
and, I hope, me more dear to you.” Following which 
sentiment expressed she drank deep of that compensa¬ 
tion, while the newly-born hope of the future’s happi¬ 
ness blotted out despondency, and tears of incrimination 
turned to tears of joy. 

After a long pause which neither evinced any desire 
to break he said: 

“It was simply a case of a bad boy wanting his own 
way and getting the rod for it. I caused the trouble by 
holding firm to my convictions, dear girl, in the first 
place, and then, happening at the danger spot at the 
crucial moment, I did what any man would have done 
to avoid bloodshed, if possible. That I didn’t wasn’t my 
fault. It flashed across me regarding you and mother 


240 


In The Carbon Hills 


and the women in the village, sweetheart, some of them 
not long married, some, like, us, about to be, women I 
know as well as you—almost—and particularly that one 
you told me to- 

He stopped abruptly. Elizabeth had placed her hand 
very softly over his mouth, while above it, and through 
the slightly dull lustre of the dark eyes, shone the 
roguish twinkle characteristic of the man. 

“Alright,” he agreed, taking her hand away; “I won’t.” 

But she clung lovingly to his fingers, squeezing tightly 
to her soft bosom a hand which had lost its grip and its 
color with the ebbing blood. He spoke again : 

“That’s less easily done than desired, where there are 
an unreasoning mob on one hand and an undisciplined 
body of armed men on the other. Personally I regret 
the latter part of the affair more than all else. But,” he 
continued in more cheerful vein: “I reckon the whole 
thing is one of the ‘considerations’ and ‘good wills’ 
thrown in gratis with the purchase of coal mines and the 
lands and appurtenances thereto, or for that matter the 
taking over of management, the same as the more se¬ 
rious explosions.” 

“Then,” queried Elizabeth, smiling into his eyes, “I 
suppose ‘the appurtenances thereto’ include me?” which 
irrelevance prompted Eldred Morris to muster all his 
strength and pull her down to him again. 

“Not today, anyhow,” he said. “The relative values 
place you in the position of the ‘present’ on an anniver¬ 
sary, the mines as the ‘tag’ as I see them just now,” to 
which he might have added more but for the upraised 
finger of the nurse just entering the door. 

Elizabeth removed herself from the bedside and 
straightened her rumpled skirts. Then she went out, 
nor would they let her stay with him for several days, 
for which a certain high temperature following this visit 
was held responsible. 




CHAPTER XXXI. 


IN WHICH ONE TALKS FIRST PRINCIPLES; 

ANOTHER TALKS SENSE 

But the day came when he would not let her go so 
soon as she came in and kissed him. He told the nurse 
he would ring or send Elizabeth for her if needed: that 
she could take a nap, not having had much sleep the 
night before, since the second nurse was gone now. 
And, assured by the gleaming light of health-returning 
obvious to trained specimens of her order, white-cap left 
the two together. 

After the preliminaries of necessity or otherwise in¬ 
terspersed with—!*?!!**? etcerta, he told her he had 
been thinking of an incident which proved the truth of 
the assertion that history repeats itself. 

“It happened in my school days, when I was a kid, 
I mean, and the history act was on a smaller scale than 
this last one we’ve just gone through.” 

“You’re a kid now,” Elizabeth interposed; “my kid 
. . .” patting the over-sinewy hand lying on the coun¬ 

terpane. 

“I was Emily Morris’s, then. Poor mother! Is she 
any better today? and did you send that basket and 
note for me?” 

“I did, and she is better, sir,” Elizabeth replied with 
mock courtesy. 

“And dad?” 

“He came to ask about you before you were awake: 
said he would like to wish you good-bye before he goes 
away.” 


241 


242 


In The Carbon Hills 


The eyes of the man on the bed flew wide open. 
“Away!” he said, “at his age?” 

Elizabeth picked in silence for a moment at a ridge 
in the coverlet. Her head was bent as she said quietly: 

“Your order, Eldred, included your father, but not 
Tom; didn’t you think of that when you sent it to Uncle 
Turley? You said only ‘none who took a leading part,’ 

and-” Elizabeth wisely said no more, remaining 

silent for him to think it over. Ultimately she added: 

“The men at the other mines have gone in regardless 
of the predicament it leaves their leaders in. The union 
ordered the miners everywhere to do the best they could 
for themselves until the Arbitration Committee, appoint¬ 
ed by the President, shall have gathered sufficient data 
and given its decision. The little bit of strike-pay your 
father had is stopped, so he told me out by the gate when 
he went away,” she drooned quietly, sympathetically, 
“and your mother’s illness has put them in a condition 
which makes work imperative.” 

“Poor mother,” Eldred Morris repeated again, almost 
to himself. Elizabeth started to say something but he 
thrust his hand into hers and said ,“Wait, please,” and 
himself waited, saying nothing for a long while. Evi¬ 
dently he thought much, and the sensitive heart beside 
him, hoping the news would modify his attitude, fell 
into his mood willingly. When he looked up into her 
eyes again her quick perception saw therein what she 
believed a hope fulfilled. She saw in his eyes a light: 
a wondering, larger light: the light of greater tolerance. 
He spoke: 

“Elizabeth.” And she: 

“Well?” 

“I’m still foggy.” 

Elizabeth smiled but her hopes sank. 

“I can’t see that Victory has perched altogether on the 
right standard,” and her hopes were raised again. “I’ve 



In The Carbon Hills 


243 


been thinking of a principle so strong—whether right or 
wrong is not exactly clear at this moment—that will 
bring to its adherents and those they love great suffering 
and long continued, yet a principle that holds its own 
pretty well with hundreds of thousands of sturdy 
Americans: a principle that is literally phoenix in its 
ability to rise from the ashes of temporary destruction, 
and so vital that it reaches Washington. I’ve been won¬ 
dering if, after all, it can be altogether wrong? An agi¬ 
tator—with all due respect to your father and to mine— 
may cast a glamour over, and spell-bind, a few hobble- 
de-hoys with his crude orations, particularly iif said 
hobbles have been working steadily for some time and 
want a holiday and see no way to get one except to 
strike, but there must be more than that to it to draw 
five hundred thousand men,* two-thirds of whom have 
wives and families dependent on them, from steady work 
and a full cupboard to idleness and starvation, mustn’t 
there? And particularly when thousands of those men 
are fellows with mental qualities not excelled by no men 
on earth having no more education to broaden their vis¬ 
ion. I know, dear,” he went on, talking quietly to the 
bowed head, “for I’m a limb of that tree which bears 
such fruit, and a ‘wicked limb‘ I’ll bet that tree thinks 
Eldred Morris, just now,” he laughed gently. 

“It’s the latter I started to speak of,” Elizabeth ex¬ 
plained when he paused; “of your father and mother. Of 
the two he looks the worse. He seems old and shaken 
with worry, Eldred. Couldn’t you—couldn’t you do 
something for him, dear, for your mother’s sake and 
Tom’s? I spoke to papa,” the fair pleader continued, 

♦The strike at THE EFFIE and its contemporaneous oper¬ 
ations was but a local manifestation of nation-wide unrest. 
Nearly half a million miners alone were involved in periods 
ranging from a few weeks to many months. The Author shared 
the suffering of seven months striking at the mine where he 
was then employed. 



244 


In The Carbon Hills 


“and he said it was ‘up to you.' You had ordered that 
no one having a leading part should work for the com¬ 
pany at any of its mines. But for the deserving is there 
no indirect way you could- 

“Elizabeth!” he exclaimed querulously. 

“Well, direct, then?” she insisted. “And there's an¬ 
other, only that poor Margaret has had nothing to do 
with the strike, but her brothers being out and now— 
Margaret Farley, I mean,” she amended. “You know 
she was—you know, now," Elizabeth blushed the color 
of the rose in her hair, “without me saying,” she tap¬ 
ped his smiling face gently, and he nodded assent. 
“Well, after the explosion down there she came home, 
you know, and she has recently been confined with a 
dear little girl, Eldred . . .” 

“Well?” he prompted. The smile was gone; he ex¬ 
pected to hear Margaret had gone to her husband, as is 
the way all good wives must do sometime. It proved 
not quite so bad as that. 

“That is all, only that Hilman says she’ll die if she 
doesn’t have better nourishment, and she won’t let them 
get pauper aid for her.” 

And again the man lapsed into a long silence. Eliza¬ 
beth broke it by asking: 

“You know Margaret Thomas, Eldred?” mentioning 
her maiden name. 

“I ought to after the hall—” the light came again to 
his eyes and the tears to hers, so he desisted. Her voice 
had trembled in almost foolish iteration of a known fact. 
What he felt he did not say. The womanly heart was 
urged to pity for the young mother, regret for insinuation 
and wrong long past and forgotten by others—almost— 
and desire to make amends in some practical way greatly 
agitated Elizabeth just then. And equally earnest as 
she Eldred Morris desired to help, but sought for some 
solution which would not compromise him nor weaken 
his stand with many others. 



In The Carbon Hills 


245 


Like Elizabeth he had wondered at the great moral 
change wrought in Farley by his love for the village 
belle ere they left Carbonia. He had watched with in¬ 
terest a marriage in which virtue and constancy to an 
ideal, and sweet womanliness, had won over degrada¬ 
tion which is generally the victor, unfortunately. Mar¬ 
garet Farley, with whom as Margaret Thomas, he had 
shared the rymthic step, was starving, and the new¬ 
born babe for which she had gone deep into The Valley 
of The Shadow would starve and die also. The young 
mother, and the dimpled duplicate of herself and the 
young miner she had lost by one of the tragedies of The 
Underground, would travel still deeper into The Great 
Unknown, perhaps, because of—him. He looked at 
Elizabeth, and fancied her return from that journey only 
to find starvation awaiting, and it became a tangible 
thing to be avoided, let men say what they would. 

“Give me that pencil, please,” he told her, “and that 
piece of paper,” pointing to a prescription blank lying 
on the table where his drugs were kept. 

He wrote and erased and wrote again. Then after an¬ 
other efifort he gave Elizabeth the note, while on his 
face there came that complexity you’ve seen on a bad 
boy’s before now, when he went more or less bravely to 
take punishment for a deed precipitately done. 

Elizabeth laid the slip of paper aside, and with it she 
placed, in an envelope, several large gold pieces. Bend¬ 
ing over him after her return from her dressing-table she 
said in playful secrecy: “I had saved them for our wed¬ 
ding journey, but-” What other pleasantries passed 

between them we need not indite. 

An hour or two later she returned and told him she 
had delivered the note to Margaret and a verbally whis¬ 
pered bit of good news for John Morris. And she told 
him how Emily Morris had cried when she said what 
she had to say there, and how she—Elizabeth—herself 



246 


In The Carbon Hills 


had enjoyed a good cry also, in company with the young 
mother at the crippled Thomas’s, no obtuse man being 
anywhere in sight. Plied for reason she said she didn’t 
know unless it was because she—being now able in a 
slight measure to make amends to a young woman she 
really liked well—now—had either to cry or laugh, and 
that the former in that particular premise made her feel 
better! 

“You silly kid,” he said, but he did not mean it, though 
the epithet of love reminded him of something he did. 

“I was going to school, then, as I started to tell you 
before you started for the village, and I had an apple, 
also considerable sympathy as boys go, I reckon. There 
were four of us, and three bit according to direction. 
The last one bit my finger in his greed to get what I 
reserved to myself. I danced and he ran, but I was the 
fleeter. When I’d licked him the apple wasn’t of much 
account, but there were candy-sticks and other apples 
to come, and I always watched him closely after that.” 

Then he told her of her father being up to see him 
after she had gone on her errand of mercy. “He tells me 
the last man has gone in who can go, and I’ve sent word 
for MacDonald to watch what new material he puts on. 
Dynamite is harmless, Pet, if you keep the caps away 
and don’t get too near the fire, and I think dad’s frozen 
so hard he won’t thaw for a while.” 

Then, when he was rested, for strength was far from 
full as yet, he added: 

“But if he should, and the flood of union rhetoric pour 
forth over us again, there would be much to warrant it. 
While it seems barbarous to deny a man the right to 
work and sustain himself at his trade without outside in¬ 
terference, and under any terms he desires, yet there 
is much to be said against it, and we must needs have 
accepted the principle if we had been weaker. Dad is 
right in that many instances wages can only be upheld 


In The Carbon Hills 


247 


by such means. One must also admit his assertion that 
unfair employers would eventually bring the living stand¬ 
ard, through their constant undercutting to get trade, 
low as Europe or Asia if the great body of Americans 
were not opposed to it. The man, employer or em¬ 
ployee, exhibiting that tendency, is as inimical to the 
welfare of his community, and trade, as the thief who 
goes from house to house taking a sack of flour from 
this one this week and a flitch of bacon next, and re¬ 
peats the process. Through such ignorance certain men 
who employ and others who are employed become fes¬ 
tering thorns in the body industrial, and the majority say 
he shall change his method or he shall get out. They fail 
to take into account that there are employers as well as 
employees who would not do such things.” 

“The Wilkes Coal Company, through its managing 
officer, Mr. Eldred Morris,’ for instance,” Elizabeth 
smiled patiently, rearranging some flowers she had 
brought up, freshly cut, for his room, and indulging in 
his philosophy not because she was interested in the 
least. Another time she would have turned the subject 
bluntly by word or yawn. She allowed her eyes to set 
as though in concentration and following him as he de¬ 
sired. Assuredly he was “foggy” to the extent of being 
unaware of her duplicitv. She urged casually: 

“The Wilkes Coal Company?” 

“If you like; and therein they are wrong. Can you 
repeat that clause in The Constitution of The United 
States, dear?” 

Elizabeth tried, blundered, stopped in confusion. 

“Never mind,” he said soothingly, setting her hand be¬ 
tween his own, then at once changing to arrogance: 
“They’re wrong anyhow. That clause must be amended 
or they’ll forever stay wrong, and that function is The 
Public’s through its legislative officers, and not the 
miners’ nor the employers’. The Public will deal rightly 


248 


In The Carbon Hills 


with it sometime, but there’ll be many a Margaret Farley 
and her new-born babe starving first, sweetheart . . . 

If it come soon it will be because of the willingness of 
the John Morris’s and Roger Wilkes’s to suffer, and, 
by their very multiplicity of numbers and suffering com¬ 
pel national action resulting in a Permanent Board of 
Compulsory Arbitration. 

“Until then The Powerless will continue to chop fu- 
tilely at the branch to destroy the tree, instead of inter¬ 
viewing The Gardener with respect to grafting on wood 
of better fruitage. The fact that we did not 'chop’ had 
as much to do with our success as anything else. If we 
hadn’t kept within the law do you think the Governor 
would have sent troops to our aid? We would have 
been among the quelled instead of the quelling. We were 
right, of course, and why couldn’t all the numbers of 
men we employ see that—oh, fiddlesticks! 

“Same old riddle of the ages, Elizabeth. Why is one 
man a Democrat and another a Republican? one a 
Catholic willing to die for his belief and another willing 
to die in protestation against that same belief? Such 
diametrically-opposed ideas never will find a common 
meeting ground so long as the written instrument of their 
common nation guarantees them the privilege of caus¬ 
ing themselves and others distress untold by fighting it 
out on the line of ‘Might Makes Right,’ which we know 
it doesn’t, don't we, dear?’’ he asked pensively, and with 
a little trembling of agitation just as the nurse came in, 
unasked, and the girl beside him jumped from her seat. 

Elizabeth colored like a school-miss caught in a for¬ 
bidden tete-a-tete, for the second time that day straight¬ 
ening the immaculately-laundered skirts and putting 
forth her jewelled fingers to her hair. Yet despite the 
interruption the man was not done. 

“There’s one thing missing which might remove—I be¬ 
lieve would remove—the need of compulsion, and that is 


In The Carbon Hills 


249 


the broader breadth and greater comprehensiveness of 
men when educated. For what is the use of going) through 
the furnace of all those years of study, which most men 
hate, if the refining process do not melt the angular 
points of bigotry and narrow-mindedness and self? 
Surely there would be no need of such strenuous meas¬ 
ures on the part of laboring men if all employers, who 
are generally educated men, would deal in a way 
that-.” 

Suddenly Morris stopped, confounded somewhat by 
the suggestion of conflicting elements in his own logic. 
But doubt passed when he raised his head, for his little 
dissertation had been accomplished with his eyes set on 
a spot from which they had not moved but rarely till 
then. This was a habit he had formed for the better con¬ 
centration of mind. In the door he saw a round, smil¬ 
ing, face bubbling over with long-suppressed mirth, at 
what he did not realize just then. His academic learn¬ 
ing had not helped him to always satisfactorily analyze 
those smiles, nor the tears so closely allied. And quite 
as often he failed to satisfactorily dissect her ready sub¬ 
mission or stubborn desire to do as she pleased. Here 
was an enigma, indeed, with its laced-elbows almost 
touching the door-frames on either side of arms crooked, 
and fingers adjusting hair, which all his philosophy 
could not solve. He asked somewhat nervously: 

“What do you think of it? Don’t you think it would 
help wonderfully toward gaining that great end?” 

“I don’t know,” Elizabeth replied complacently, her 
rosy cheeks dimpling. “I was thinking of old Jimmy 
Wilmot, and what a wonderful effect The Constitutional 
Right had on mother’s chickens,” she said, tripping light- 
heartedly away. 



EPILOGUE 


Happiness almost unalloyed fairly flew away with all 
sense of time at the big house above The Four Rows, 
and never so fast as during that blissful, anticipatory, 
period preceding the coming of Eldred II. Nor lagged 
it much even unto one morning when, with his arm 
around his wife’s soft shoulders, as the couple stood for 
a moment watching the little boy play, Eldred Morris 
exclaimed: 

“Five years today since we are married, Elizabeth? 
Why it doesn’t seem five months . . .” 

“But here are the roguish proofs of it, sweetheart,” re¬ 
plied she, her eyes wandering from the little boy to a 
tiny maid clutching her mamma’s skirt, and between 
Elizabeth and Eldred Morris there passed an elliptic 
phrase both understood to mean that life was indeed a 
pleasant thing after all, its occasional sorrows but serv¬ 
ing as a necessary background for the better illumination 
of its joys. 

Even so, dear reader, it had been for Eldred and Eliza¬ 
beth Morris; not alone in that calm and beautiful period, 
but because Time had brought nearly all our own people 
and still more to love and respect. Most all of those we 
knew are still dwelling near The Four Rows; Calabrue’s 
still furnishes macaroni at “’wholesale” to its “boarders,” 
and Maloney’s much froth at retail, to ever-increasing 
numbers of the late Pietrecco’s “cousins” and equally 
close relations of the one time Loud-Mouthed Rossi. 

Across the field Emily Morris is confined for long 
periods. She gets sufficiently better at times to spend 
a day at the big house with Eldred I and II, Elizabeth 

250 


In The Carbon Hills 


251 

and Little Emily. The cottage beyond the coppice where 
the coy canary sang and Elizabeth cried is all Emily 
Morris’s own now. The deed to it and a five acre patch, 
in part of which are two Jerseys and a lot of chickens, 
was the mining engineer’s tribute to his first teacher in 
English on her last birthday. 

And here—a small landed gentleman indeed—John 
Morris has not ceased from troubling, but is, from the 
immediate adversities of mining life, at rest. His hopes 
for unionism throughout the entire district are with one 
insignificant exception fulfilled. Agitation wholesome 
and persistent for ever broader participancy of the Nat¬ 
ional Government in mining affairs grows partly at least 
because of the humble miner’s efforts. Human Mercy 
(labeled “Compensation”) for the victims of accident in 
our tragic craft is now the chiefest desire of John Mor¬ 
ris’s heart, not alone in Pennsylvania, where at this writ¬ 
ing (this part of the volume was apparently written just 
previous to the passage of Pennsylvania’s eminently hu¬ 
manitarian law of compensation for injuries—Editor) it 
seems assured, and in West Virginia where it has now 
for some time been in operation, but throughout the 
nation. 

To this end I wrote for him, and there were published 
in The Colliery Engineer and other mining journals§ ar¬ 
ticles bodying forth his ideas on this subject in detail. 
Later excerpts from private letters and these papers were 
read before The United States Senate.* The fact, also, 
that an embodiment of the same in a paper read before 

§ Reynolds: “The Possibilities of A Federal Liability Law.” 

Reynolds: “What Shall We Do With Our Industrial 
Wounded?” 

♦Used in speech before U. S. Senate advocating Federal 
participancy in mine welfare, which resulted in the institution 
of the present efficient United States Bureau of Mines. Use of 
articles and letters requested by Charles Dick (Ohio), then 
Chairman of The Committee on Mines and Mining in United 
States Senate. 



252 In The Carbon Hills 

a conference of mining men in West Virginiat was fol¬ 
lowed by the immediate appointment on the part of the 
Governor of that State of a committee of investigation, 
ultimately led to adequate provision for all dependents 
caused by mining accidents in that commonwealth, gave 
John and Emily Morris great joy, even more, perhaps, 
than a later recognition by The Wilkes Coal Company 
of the union. 

Nor must we forget our old friend Collson. In a 
garden back of The Batch the old lampman cultivates his 
special brand of tobacco and cherishes the last spark oi 
life in a doddering old hound. Nellie succumbed to the 
cold long ago. And every Sunday morning, when “All’s 
Well” at The Bffie and Eldred Morris is at home, one 
may see going across the fields a well-built man smoking 
a silver-mounted meerschaum, and carrying a basket of 
—well—there is nothing cooked at The Batch nowadays 
except an occasional pot of tea or coffee, and not even 
that on Sundays. In a special corner of that basket 
there is reserved a place for a quart jar of good Mocha 
which Elizabeth makes herself and little daughter -stirs 
the milk in. 

And with Eldred on this mission, when the days are 
fine, one sees often as not an immaculately-dressed Little 
Emily of three, escorted, by a trim lad of four, to the 
yard where the pine still stands. 

At the big house Eldred Morris, M. E., is no longer 
paramount, although more of a breadth in physique and 
intellect. The Arbiter of all opinions there, and includ¬ 
ing those of John Morris and Emily as well as Grandpa 
Roger and Grandma Effie, is a veritable replica of the 
engineer’s boyhood. Eldred Morris Junior has of late 
graduated from dresses to linen pants and blouse, and 

tPlea for Workmen’s Compensation before Mining Confer¬ 
ence held in Charleston, West Va., from paper written by W. H. 
Reynolds; delivered in Conference by S. C. Reynolds. 



In The Carbon Hills 


253 


with the complement of tan sandals and tan stocking’s 
considers himself quite on sartorial level with Emily: 
aged 3 . But he doesn’t stay thus as does the little maid. 

Eldred II has as yet no sense of certain doubt. To him 
his papa and his papa’s “den” comprise the seven won¬ 
ders, and his big dark eyes would question even the blue 
ones of his mamma as to an impossible assertion that 
there ever existed anything equal. Perhaps the fact that 
the little boy is allowed sometimes to carry the aluminum 
“Wolf” lamp, or, being lifted up, to peep at the wonder¬ 
lands beyond the transit-lens, has somewhat to do with 
this opinion. Perhaps it is because he is allowed in 
preference to Little Emily to accompany the mining 
engineer on journeys from home lasting a week or more. 
One can only assume but not question the psychology of 
a little boy. 

But one may with propriety confidently assert the opin¬ 
ion that if The Darwinian Theory regarding heredity 
and selection hold good, by the time Eldred Morris ease 
up in the great industry the latest Eldred will be ready 
and eager to step into his place. 

Let us hope that for generations to come the deeper 
and newer mines of the vast and almost virgin coal fields 
of Washington and Greene Counties of Pennsylvania, 
and the measures of the more southern state of West 
Virginia, will not lack mining engineers and mine man¬ 
agers whose true manhood and ability, not less than their 
existence, may be traced back to the love of our own 
blue-eyed Elizabeth and the darker Eldred. 


THE END. 


THE ZIEGLER PRINTING CO., INC 
115-117-119 SAST NORTH STREET 
BUTLER. PA. 













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AN IDEA OF THE AUTHOR’S WORK REGARDING MINES AND MINING LIFE may be gained from the following ex¬ 
cerpts culled from nearly 400 letters sent voluntarily regarding the books preceding IN THE CARBON HILLS. Space limits 
compel abbreviation. The prospective purchaser, however, may find in what follows some inkling as to what he may expect 
in the new book: 

Part of a letter sent by the Editor of The World's Work after reading some of the author’s manuscript regarding mining 
men and their lives: “Dear Mr. Reynolds: The feeling is strong within me that you can write a story of the real life of the 
mines, and write it in such a way that it will be regarded as a classic. * * * Such a story ought to be written, and you seem 

to be the man to write it. If you do I hope you will let me see it. 

Sincerely yours, 

EDGAR ALLEN FORBES.” 

That story is, after seven years’ labor, written and offered you under the title of IN THE CARBON HILLS. 

From THE NEWELL MIRROR Editorial by H. C. Gordon, Editor, Newell, Iowa: “The story is of thrilling interest from 
start to finish. Love, pathos, hope, despair: the lights and shadows of life in a mining community are depicted on the pages 
of the book with a master hand. One cannot read the story without having the emotions of the soul stirred to their depths.” 

Rev. Richard Woods, 616 14th St., Huntington, West, Va.: “After reading every line my great difficulty is to find words 

with which to express my gratitude and opinion * * * the story is beautiful beyond my power to describe * * * Surely 

God led you to the production of this wonderful work, for while helping yourself you are helping others.” 

Orlando W. Olds, 726 Cedar St., Allentown, Pa.: I was so impressed and pleased with your book that I wanted everybody to 
read it. I appointed myself as voluntary agent and enclose payment in full for 24 copies for my friends. More to come.” 

T. N. Wilson, Esq., U. S. Revenue Service, Dayton, O.: “The equal of anything I ever read in my life.” 

Lewis B. Houck, Attorney-at-law, former State Senator, Mt. Vernon, Ohio. “A story that will touch the heart of every 
reader, and no one but will be the better and happier for having read it.” 

AMERICAN HOME (Magazine): “The world is the better for such a book’s existence * * * This work contributes to 

the Author’s already established reputation as an entertaining and forceful writer.” 

Henry Geiss, Mine Foreman, 339 Mo. Bromley Ave., Scranton, Pa.: “Having been a mine foreman for 24 years, and hav¬ 
ing lost my only brother in the mines under circumstances almost identical with those depicted therein, I read your book per¬ 
haps more critically than most, and certainly with greater interest, with the result that I am very much pleased with it.” 

The gentleman below had evidently been fooled with “book promises.” Like many others he wrote as follows, and we 

are pleased to add, did as all the rest who wrote similarly: “Clay Lick, Ohio, Aug. 25th, 1911: Please send me, as per circulars, 

one copy. If satisfactory will remit payment, if not return the book. Chas. E. Cougill.” 

On Sept. 5th, he wrote: “Dear Mr. Reynolds: Enclose find payment. * * * The book is great!” 

W. L. Aker, Manager Gem City Art Co., Dayton, Ohio: “Your books are worth ten times their cost. They are gems in 
a class of their own.” 

Dr. W. S. Hoy, Wellston, Ohio: “Words of mine would be too poor, too weak, to express the nobility of thought, the im¬ 
pulses for good, which reading such work instills in the human mind. The book is a masterpiece.” 

S. J. Southard, Attcrney-at-law, Bellefontaine, Ohio: “Read by all the family as well as myself, and we think a great deal 
of it. * * * One of the very few books that can be read again and again with undiminished interest. With best wishes 

and hoping you will have everlasting reward for the good your books are doing and have done for humanity.” 

Mrs. Pearl T. Ernewein, Lake Placid, Adirondack Mts., New York: “Like many others I find myself unable to express my 
appreciation of this sweet, helpful, story. Though told with such simplicity there is a deep undercurrent of courage and vigor 
which will surely inspire every reader to take a greater interest in ‘Our Brothers of The Underground.’ ” 

Chas. Denby, Esq., Philadelphia: Member National Geographical Society: “I became so interested that, except for meals, 

I never stopped until I had read it through.” 

Pittsburgh Gazette-Times : “Mr. Reynolds’s stories are well worth reading for their sympathetic pictures of mining life.” 

THE FOLLOWING MAY ALSO BE OF INTEREST TO YOU: 

Some years before the consolidation of THE COLLIERY ENGINEER with COAL AGE, W. H. Reynolds was, after several 
years’ contributory effort to its pages, offered the position of Assistant Editor on THE COLLIERY ENGINEER Staff. Physical 
disability alone prevented acceptance. A few of the author’s more recent contributions of purely mining articles, written in most 
cases with the collaboration of a brother, S. C. Reynolds, formerly Superintendent of Marianna Mines, and J. T. Reynolds, an¬ 
other brother, both now acting as Mine Inspectors, follow: 

IDEAS OF PROA ED A ALT E IN MINE PRACTICE (A series of articles based on experience of twelve months superin¬ 
tendency of one of Pennsylvania’s most dangerous gas-coal mines employing nearly a thousand men. Same mine “blew up” 
some time previously and killed every man and boy in it). 

ROBBING MINE AIR OF ITS DANGER (The chief article of above series). 

THE CHERRY VALLEY MINE DISASTER AND ITS LESSONS. 

WORKMEN’S COMPENSATION. 

LONGWALL: ITS MERITS AND DEMERITS UNDER VARYING CIRCUMSTANCES 

CAN VENTILATION BE SAFELY REDUCED AT FIRING TIME? (A reply to Mine Inspector John Verner) 

THE USE OF STEAM TO COMBAT THE DUST MENACE. 

THE FALLACY OF THE STONE DUST METHOD AS A UNIVERSAL REMEDY FOR DUST EXPLOSIONS 

THE “CARPET BAGGER” AND HIS EFFECT ON MINING. • 

POSSIBLE LOOP HOLES IN SAFETY-FIRST METODS. 

THE HUMAN ELEMENT AND ITS RELATION TO THE SAFE MINING OF COAL. 

WHAT IS “AN EFFICIENT MINE FOREMAN?” 


Note: None of the above are as yet in book form. 





LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 


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